.Stack 

«nnex 

JU 

74U 

K79 

19U4 


SOME  ISMS 
OF  TO-DAY 


KRAUSKOPP 


x 


Some  Isms  of  To-Day 


RABBI  JOSEPH  KRAUSKOPF,  D.  D. 

AUTHOR  OF  A  RAHHI'S  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  OBERAMMERGAU  PASSION  PLAY, 

EVOLUTION  AND  JUDAISM,  THE  JEWS  AND  MOORS  IN  SPAIN, 

THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN,  ETC.,  ETC. 


OSCAR    KLONOWEK, 

PHILADELPHIA. 

1904. 


Stack 
Annex 


HHO 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

EGOISM, i 

ALTRUISM, ii 

PESSIMISM 21 

OPTIMISM 31 

REALISM, 43 

IDEALISM 55 

DOWIEISM, „ 65 

MYSTICISM, 77 

TRADE-UNIONISM 89 


Jama  of  SJa- 

I— EGOISM. 


A  SUNDAY  DISCOURSE 

BBFORB    THE 

REFORM  CONGREGATION  KENBSETH  ISRAEL, 

BY 

RABBI  JOSEPH  KRAUSKOPF.  D.  D. 

Philadelphia,  Feb.  aist,  iqo4. 


Text :  "As  he  thinketh  in  his  heart,  so  is  he."    PROVBRBS  xxxni,  7. 
SCRIPTURAL  LESSON  :  EXODUS,  xxxn. 


Few  stories  in  the  Bible  are  more  beautiful  than  the  one 
we  have  read  this  morning.  One  is  at  a  loss  to  tell  what  to 
admire  the  most,  whether  its  poetry,  or  its  dar-  Mo868,  hold  on  hl, 
ing,  or  its  moral.  Its  hero,  pleading  and  argu-  people  due  to  un- 
ing  with  God  in  behalf  of  his  rebellious  people,  8elfishne"- 
wholly  unmindful  of  the  personal  advantage  held  out  to  him, 
so  aroused  the  poetic  fire  of  Heine  as  to  move  him  to  say, 
that,  on  that  mountain-top,  God  seemed  but  a  reflection  of  the 
greatness  of  Moses.  I  quite  forgive  the  poet  his  seeming 
blasphemy,  for  I  quite  share  his  admiration  of  Moses. 

And  I  believe  that  the  two  of  us  but  echo  the  admiration 
evinced  by  the  original  writer  of  this  episode.  I  do  not  for  one 
moment  think  that  the  bard,  who  first  conceived  this  story, 
meant  his  hearers  to  believe  that  he  was  describing  an  actual 
scene  between  God  and  Moses.  He  but  intended  it  to  serve  as 


a  poetic  setting  for  his  great  picture,  that  of  the  self- sacrificing 
devotion  of  Moses  to  his  people,  a  devotion  that  not  even  in- 
gratitude nor  rebellion  could  uproot,  a  devotion  for  which  he 
had  surrendered  his  home  and  his  country,  the  association  of 
the  great  and  learned,  the  opportunity  of  possibly  ascending 
the  throne  of  Egypt;  a  devotion  for  which,  in  return,  he  asked 
no  honor,  no  tribute  for  himself,  no  throne,  no  title  for  his 
children,  no  monument,  not  even  a  tomb  to  his  memory  after 
his  death.  Great  as  was  his  leadership,  great  as  were  his 
powers  as  lawgiver,  I  believe  it  was  his  unselfishness,  the  en- 
tire want  of  egoism  in  his  nature,  that,  more  than  everything 
else,  gave  him  his  hold  on  his  people,  and  enabled  him  to  per- 
form those  marvellous  deeds,  that  have  secured  for  him  a  fore- 
most niche  in  the  temple  of  the  world's  immortals. 

This  same  unselfishness  it  was,  this  same  utter  want  of 
egoism,  that  gave  the  founder  of  Christianity  the  marvellous 
hold  he  has  had,  and  still  has,  on  millions  of  peo- 
Ples'  Beautiful  as  were  the  teachings  of  Jesus, 
there  was  nothing  new  in  them.  They  were  the 
daily  lessons  in  the  Judaean  schools  and  synagogues  of  his 
time.  Neither  his  sermon  on  the  mount,  nor  his  parables,  nor 
his  cures,  created  the  new  faith.  It  was  the  story  of  his  self- 
abnegation,  his  descent  to  the  lowly,  his  sympathy  with  the 
sorrowing  and  heavy-laden,  his  answering  sigh  with  sigh,  and 
tear  with  tear,  his  daring  and  surrendering  his  very  life  to  free 
his  people  from  the  Roman  yoke,  this  it  was  that  awakened  a 
responsive  chord  in  the  hearts  of  the  people,  that  made  them 
believe  in  his  message,  and  follow  in  his  footsteps. 

And  the  same  self-abnegation  it  was  that  made  Buddha 
the  founder  of  the  largest  faith   on  earth.     Cradled  had  he 
been  in  luxury.     The  throne  of  a  mighty  empire 
al$0thaBu°dfdha.  had  awaited  his  ascent.     Millions  of  people  had 
prostrated  themselves  before  his  presence.     But 
he  had  seen  their  misery,  the  cruelty  of  the  caste-system,  the 
oppression  of  the  rich,  and  the  suffering  of  the  poor.     And  he 
donned  the  garb  of  beggars,  shared  their  bed  and  board,  com- 
forted and  healed  and  enlightened  the  sick  and  ignorant  and 


needy.     This  it  was,  and  not  his  doctrine,  that  made  him  the 
Light  of  Asia. 

To-morrow,  a  grateful  American  people  will  celebrate  the 
natal  day  of  Washington.  More  than  a  century  and  a  quarter 
have  passed  since  he  performed  those  deeds  of  Unse|fishnes8  key 
valor  that  have  made  his  name  illustrious  among  of  Washington's 
the  warriors  of  the  earth.  But  it  was  neither  his  c 
valorous  deeds  nor  his  brilliant  victories  that  have  hallowed 
his  name  to  the  American  heart.  Brave  men  fought  valiantly 
before  his  day,  and  have  fought  valiantly  since.  Greater 
battles  than  any  that  Washington  fought,  were  fought  and 
won  during  the  Civil  .War.  It  is  even  a  fact  that  he  lost  more 
battles  than  he  won.  And  it  is  likewise  a  fact  that  Presidents 
have  since  his  day  met  and  conquered  crises  such  as  never 
tried  the  sagacity  of  the  father  of  our  country.  His  hold  on 
the  American  people  is  due  more  to  his  conquest  of  self  than 
to  his  conquest  of  the  enemy,  more  to  his  rulership  over  his 
ambition  than  to  his  rulership  over  his  people.  For  his  peo- 
ple's sake  he  had  surrendered  what  might  have  been  a  life  of 
ease.  For  his  people's  sake  he  bore  the  greatest  burden,  and 
suffered  the  direst  hardships.  Never  a  thought  of  self  pro- 
faned his  mind;  never  an  ambition,  apart  from  the  glory  of 
his  people,  desecrated  his  heart.  And  when  triumph  came, 
and  his  name  resounded  in  songs  of  praise  around  the  world, 
and  a  Nation  worshipped  at  his  feet,  his  interests  of  self  were 
merged  more  than  ever  in  his  nation's  good.  Unto  the  end, 
continued  he,  as  John  H.  Ingham  sang: 

"Humble  in  triumph,  temperate  in  power 
Not  striking,  like  the  Corsican,  to  tower 
To  heaven,  nor,  like  great  Philip's  greater  son, 
To  win  the  world,  and  weep  for  the  world's  unwon." 

We  turn  from  Washington  to  Benedict  Arnold.     What  a 
difference   in    our   feelings    toward    the   two!     How  the   one 
awakens  our  awe,  and  the  other  our  contempt! 
And   yet  the   two  were  friends  at  one  time,  and 
comrades    in    the    war   of  independence.     What 
soldier  braver  in  that  war  than  Benedict  Arnold  ?     What  com- 
mander more  victorious  ?     Whose  services   more  honored  by 


Congress  ?     What  officer  more  appreciated  and  more  befriended 
by  Washington  ? 

But  there  came  the  day  that  tested  the  metal  of  the  two, 
— it  found  the  one  gold,  the  other  dross;  the  one  a  self-sacri- 
ficing lover  of  his  country,  the  other  a  lover  of  himself  alone, 
a  base  egoist.  There  came  the  day,  that  discovered  that  he, 
who  could  scale  forts,  and  route  fleets,  and  put  armies  to  the 
edge  of  the  sword,  could  not  curb  the  lusts  of  the  flesh;  could 
not  master  the  thirst  for  power,  the  greed  for  gain.  There 
came  that  black  day  that  found  the  hero  of  Ticonderoga  a 
villainous  traitor.  And  the  two  separated — the  one  to  mount 
to  the  stars;  the  other  to  sink  into  the  bottomless  pit. 

Thus  it  is  that  base  selfishness  makes  traitors 
traitor1  Pat'        °  °f  patriots,   cowards    of  conquerors,  enemies  pf 
friends. 

We  are  hard  on  Benedict  Arnold,  and  deservedly  so.     We 

would,  if  we  could,  change  his  name  from  BENEDICT,  the  blessed, 

to  MALEDICT,  the  accursed.     But,  at  times,  when  I 

'FI  *:lj  ,     IT   usually 

tempted,  would  scan  closely  some  of  the  doings  of  men,  and 
some  of  the  motives  that  actuate  them,  I  wonder 
how  manj-  of  them,  if  equally  probed,  would  not  equally  re- 
veal themselves  as  dross,  and,  if  equally  tempted,  would  not 
prove  themselves  equally  traitorous  ?  How  many  do  not  reveal 
themselves  to  the  scrutinizing  eye  of  God  as  base  egoist,  lov- 
ing self  alone,  rendering  it  base  and  slavish  service,  catering 
to  every  lust  of  flesh,  breaking  pledge  to  wife  or  husband, 
spurning  duty  to  parent  or  child,  violating  the  trusting  love  of 
innocence,  proving  faithless  to  friend  and  fellowmen,  so  that 
lust  may  be  glutted  with  pleasure,  or  that  greed  may  be  grati- 
fied with  gain  ? 

Egoism  is  the  mote  in  the  eye  of  most  of  us,  the  curse 

that  trails  us  in  the  mire,  all  our  days.     There  are  few  of  us 

in  whom  self-preservation,  the  most  powerful  of 

Egoism   mote  in        &n  QUr  instincts    is  not  turned  into  OUr  chief  sill. 
eyes  ot  most. 

Obeying  the  instinct  to  promote  our  own  best 
good,  we  lose  sight  of  the  truth  that  the  purpose  of  self-pre- 
servation is  but  to  enable  us  the  better  to  preserve  the  good  of 
our  fellowmen. 


It  is  our  duty,  for  instance,  to  shield  and  promote  our 
own  health,  so  that  we  may  not  be  incapacitated  from  doing 
our  share  of  the  work  of  society,  nor  fall  a  bur-  Legitimate  seif-in- 
den  to  our  fellowmen,  by  unproductively  con-  terest  beneficial 
surning  what  they  produce,  by  requiring  their  and 
service  for  our  care,  by  preventing  their  contributing  their  full 
quota  to  the  good  of  all.  It  is  our  duty  to  strive  for  a  compe- 
tency, so  that  we  may  supply  our  and  our  family's  physical  and 
mental  and  moral  needs,  and  thereby  enhance  the  general  use- 
fulness and  happiness  of  society.  It  is  our  duty  to  make  our- 
selves vigorous,  agreeable,  attractive,  so  as  to  promote  desir- 
able and  healthy  marriage,  thereby  strengthening  society  and 
contributing  to  its  self -perpetuation,  which  next  to  self-preserva- 
tion, is  the  highest  instinct  of  human  nature.  It  is  our  duty 
to  husband  our  means,  so  that  we  do  not,  by  indiscriminate 
charity,  encourage  beggar}'  and  idleness,  so  that  we  do  not, 
by  reckless  expenditure,  render  ourselves  liable  to  some  day 
needing  charity  ourselves,  so  that,  by  dissipation,  we  do  not 
inflict  upon  posterity  a  debilitated  and  dependent  progeny,  so 
that,  by  extravagance,  we  do  not  set  a  pernicious  example  to 
those  who  cannot  afford  luxuries,  inciting  them  to  discontent 
and  rebellion,  or  to  imitation  by  the  aid  of  vice  and  crime. 

No  fault  is,  therefore,  to  be  found  with  legitimate  self-inter- 
est, seeing  that  on  it  depends  the  present  and 

L  Injurious   when 

future  good  of  society.  It  is  never  from  pro-  self-interest 
perly  advancing  our  own  welfare  that  society  passes  into  selfish- 
suffers.  The  injury  is  done  when  self-interest 
passes  into  base  selfishness.  When  man  seeks  his  own  good 
at  the  cost  of  another's  good;  when  a  man  believes  that  his 
own  self  has  prior  claims  to  all  that  is  best  in  the  world,  and 
that,  therefore,  rightly  or  wrongly,  it  must  be  seized  or  coveted 
by  him;  when  man  makes  of  self  an  idol,  and  bows  to  no 
other  god;  when  a  man  considers  as  nothing  the  loss  or  pain 
or  shame  of  another,  so  long  as  it  serves  his  own  gain  or  fame 
or  pleasure;  when  self-interest  so  blinds  the  eye,  so  deafens 
the  ear,  so  contracts  the  heart,  as  to  lose  all  regard  for,  all  in- 
terest in,  all  sympathy  with,  one's  fellowmeu,  present  and 
future,  then  it  is  that  egoism  is  a  curse,  and  as  fatal  to  the 


bast  interests  of  the  individual  as  it  is  to  the  best  progress  of 
society. 

And  of  those  who  are  under  this  curse  the  world  is  full. 
They  may  disguise  it,  they  rnay  even  parade  it  under  the  form 

of  virtue,  piety,  philanthropy,  patriotism,  but 
world  fun  of  such  he  nim  is  ahvays  ll)e  same,— they  are  always 
egoism. 

dominated  by  the  greed  to  have  and  to  hold,  to 

possess  and  to  enjoy,  even  though  another  lose  by  their  pos- 
sessing or  suffer  by  their  enjoying. 

It  manifests  itself  early  in  life,  and  often  does  not  surren- 
der its  hold  till  the  hour  of  death.     Some  years  ago,  a  lady 
died    in  this    city,   the  texture  of   whose  whole 

?ouernofe"deartt$  *"'  life  was  SPU"  of  the  threads  of  egoism.  She 
had  no  other  interest  than  self;  lived  for  none 
other  than  self;  engaged  in  nothing  else  save  in  the  pursuit  of 
self-gratification.  On  her  death-bed  she  designated  the  dress 
and  jewels  in  which  she  desired  to  be  laid  out,  ordered  that  her 
cheeks  be  painted,  that  she  be  so  laid  in  the  coffin  as  to  pre- 
sent a  profile  and  look  her  best,  and  that  the  open  grave  be 
lined  with  double  violets.  Truly,  her  besetting  sin  followed 
her  into  the  grave.  The  love  of  self  forsook  her  not,  not  even 
in  the  shadow  of  the  judgment  seat.  Even  of  her  insensate 
corpse  her  egoism  was  fonder  than  of  some  worthy  cause,  that 
might  have  benefitted  by  the  money  wasted  on  her  coffin  and 
grave.  The  saddest  thought  of  her  dying  hour  was  her  being 
obliged  to  leave  to  others  the  estate  she  had  inherited  from 
others,  and,  therefore,  she  took  with  her  into  the  grave,  and 
spent  on  stone  on  top  of  it,  as  much  as  she  possibly  could. 

This   specie   of  egoism  is  generally  the  culmination  of  a 

selfishness   that  is  rooted  in    earliest   infancy.     I    have   seen 

enough  of  selfishness  implanted  in  the  nurser\r 

Begins  in  infancy. 

to  last  several  lite-times. 

And  where  there  are  any  omissions  in  that  direction,  am- 
ple amends  arc  made  in  the  school.     The  very  place  in  which 
self  should  be  curbed  and  trained,  in  which  sel- 
fishuess  should  be  weeded  out,  root  and  all,  and 
a  proper  sense  of  oneness  of  the  human  family, 


and  the  commonness  of  its  interests,  implanted,  is  often  made  a 
hotbed  for  the  growing  of  the  rankest  greeds  for  honors  and  dis- 
tinctions,— not  in  the  interest  of  knowledge,  but  to  gratify  the 
thirst  of  outshining  some  other  pupil,  or  humbling  some  other 
family.  There  are  mothers  who  drive  their  daughters  to  strain- 
ing their  minds  and  bodies  beyond  their  physical  powers,  weak- 
ening them  for  life,  and  all  to  gratify  a  parental  egoism  of 
seeing  their  daughters  distinguished  at  this  or  that  higher  insti- 
tution of  learning. 

With  a  start  in  egoism  such  as  this,  one  is  little  suprised 
at  its  bountiful  harvests  later  on.  What  is  so-called  fashion- 
able society  but  a  vast  mass  of  rancid  egoism! 
Look  at  its  youg  women,  thousands  of  them, 
blessed  with  hands,  hearts  and  heads,  young  and 
vigorous,  empowered  by  nature  and  education  to  assist  in  the 
uplift  of  the  human  family,  look  at  them,  wasting  their  pre- 
cious time  on  pampering  their  egoism,  spending,  half  their 
time  in  bed,  the  other  half  on  dress,  entertainment,  extrava- 
gance, for  which  others  must  pay  in  slavish  toil,  in  righteously 
or  unrighteously  gotten  gold.  Not  many  squares  away  from 
them  sit  their  sisters  in  attic  rooms  or  sweatshops,  toiling  and 
moiling  within  the  environs  of  miser}',  early  and  late,  for  the 
pittance  to  keep  body  and  soul  together,  or  to  procure  the 
crust  of  bread  for  the  whole  family,  often  driven  to  lives  of 
shame  for  the  want  of  that  very  crust.  And  here  are  young 
society  women  racking  their  brains  for  new  ways  of  extrava- 
gant waste,  often  expending  on  a  single  entertainment  what 
would  keep  half  of  our  army  of  white  slaves  in  bread  for  a 
month,  never  moved  by  the  thought  that  it  is  largely  the  labor 
of  the  poor  that  makes  possible  the  extravagance  of  the  rich, 
and  that  the  unemployed  rich  have  duties  other  than  the  grat- 
ification of  selfish  appetites. 

And  there  is  your  society  bachelor,  one  of  the  worst  species 
of  egoism  of  the  present  day.    He  enjoys  every  advantage  which 
the  institution  of  family  life  contributes  to  civil- 
ization.     And  yet  is  he  a  drone,   living  of  the  The  efl°isbmac°Ielor 
stores  of  honey  to  which  he  refuses  to  add  his 


8 

part.  God,  in  his  wisdom,  has  divided  the  sexes  equally  in 
number.  Some  young  woman,  who  has  been  created  for  him, 
waits  in  vain  for  him.  Refusing  to  make  her  his  mate,  she  is 
denied  her  sacred  right  to  matrimony.  She  is  probably  driven 
into  the  marts  of  life  to  compete  with  man  for  her  subsistence. 
Often  the  selfishness  of  bachelors  drive  her  to  a  life  infinitely 
worse  than  this.  It  is,  alas,  only  too  true,  that  the  egoism  of 
bachelordom  has  darkened  more  homes,  has  unfitted  more  char- 
acters, has  created  more  lives  of  shame  than  any  other  evil  of 
the  present  day. 

And  there  is  )^our  fashionable  society  matron.  She  has 
her  husband  and  her  family;  she  has  her  home  and  her  friends; 

she  has  all  her  reasonable  needs  supplied.  But 
societ^matron  ^ier  eg°isln  is  n°t  yet  satisfied.  There  is  some 

one  who  has  or  is  what  she  has  not  or  is  not  yet. 
And  so,  money,  that  might  be  employed  in  somewhat  lessen- 
ing the  inequalities  and  needs  of  society,  must  be  sacrificed 
that  the  greeds  of  selfishness  be  satisfied.  What  matters  it  to 
her  that  the  innocently  poor  walk  in  rags,  as  long  as  she  has 
her  ermine  and  her  sable!  What  concern  is  it  of  hers  that 
helpless  infants  freeze  for  the  want  of  coal,  as  long  as  she  is 
bejeweled  with  precious  stones!  What  matters  it  to  her  that 
consumption  ravages  some  overworked  and  underfed  laborer's 
home,  as  long  as  she  can  spend  her  winter  in  Florida,  and  her 
summers  abroad!  For  her  there  exists  but  self;  of  the  exist- 
ence of  others  she  has  knowledge  only  in  so  far  as  they  min- 
ister to  her  selfishness. 

And  there  is  your  business  man,  enjoying  an  income  that 
supplies  all  his  reasonable  wants,  with  enough  to  lay  by  against 
reverses    of    fortune,   warned   by   exhaustion    of 

unes.men  head  and  heart  that  [t  is  highest  time  for  him  to 
proceed  at  a  slower  pace,  yet  racing  on,  and  in 
his  mad  rush  trampling  down  honor  and  honesty,  friend  and 
foe,  cornering  markets,  driving  up  prices,  grinding  down 
wages,  lengthening  hours  of  labor,  solely  to  eclipse  a  rival,  to 
down  a  competitor,  thereby  to  gratify  the  greeds  of  egoism. 

And  there  are  your  professional  men.  What  hatreds  and 
detractions  and  back-bitings  among  them!  What  exhibitions 


of  envies  and  jealousies  among  those  men,  from 
whom,  by  reason  of  their  education  and  their 
position  in  society,  better  things  are  expected! 
And  what  are  their  grievances  ?  For  the  most  part,  nothing 
but  offended  egoism.  Some  one's  practice  or  salary  is  larger, 
some  one's  fame  is  wider  known,  some  one's  company  is  more 
desired,  some  one's  efforts  are  better  appreciated.  And  thus 
no  end  of  evil  is  done,  because  one  cannot  see  another  enjoy 
what  he  himself  would  like  to  have,  nor  see  another  share  a 
success,  an  honor,  a  popularity  in  which  he  alone  would  shine. 

And  what  shall  we  say  of  the  egoism  of  politicians  and 
diplomats  ?  Who  can  enumerate  the  curses  they  have  brought 
on  society  and  on  nations,  the  strifes  they  have 
engendered,  the  wars  they  have  waged,  the  ™c'aenfls°ism  °f  po'" 
havocs  they  have  wrought, — not  in  the  interest 
of  civilization,  but  for  the  gratification  of  the  lust  of  power 
and  of  the  greed  of  gain.  What  was  back  of  the  Civil  War 
but  egoism?  What  was  back  of  the  Franco- Prussian  war,  of 
the  Russian-Turkish  war,  of  the  Spanish-American  war  but 
egoism  ?  What  is  back  of  the  war  now  waging  off  the  coasts 
of  Manchuria  and  Korea  but  the  basest  selfishness  on  the  part 
of  Russia.  Not  content  with  a  population  of  130,000,000, 
a  population  almost  twice  the  size  of  ours,  and  three  times  that 
of  France  or  Germany,  not  content  with  a  territory  that 
stretches  across  two  continents,  she  would  have  more  and 
more,  no  matter  how  many  thousands  must  shed  their  heart's 
blood,  no  matter  how  many  tens  of  thousands  must  suffer  ex- 
cruciating tortures,  no  matter  how  many  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands must  be  orphaned  and  widowed  and  bereaved,  for  the 
gratification  of  that  greed. 

We  may  record,  year  by  year,  ever  newer  and  ever  better 
achievements  in  the  sciences  and  arts  and  industries,  and  yet, 
we  will  progress  but  little,  as  long  as  the  brute 
within  us  continues  untamed.     The  wild  beast 
is  concerned   in  self  alone,  and  it  is  savage  be- 
cause wholly  selfish.     Who  loves  but  self  alone  cannot  love 
another,  and  the  self-centered  is  the  enemy  of  man.     Who 


10 

avails  himself  of  the  benefits  of  the  labors  of  infinite  millions 
of  people,  without  contributing  anything  in  return,  is  a  para- 
site and  a  thief.  Who  would  have  all  for  self,  in  the  belief 
that  thus  alone  would  he  be  happy,  is  a  madman.  He  seeks 
happiness  along  a  road  on  which  it  has  never  yet  been  found. 
The  conquerors  and  Croesuses  of  ancient  and  modern  times 
have  sought  in  vain  for  it  along  that  road.  They  who  have 
found  it  had  other  goals  in  view.  They  labored  for  the  happi- 
ness of  their  fellowmen,  and  found  their  own  therein.  They 
strove  for  the  good  of  all,  and  found  therein  their  own  good. 


Sam?  3fimjs  of  Sfa- 

II— ALTRUISM. 


A  SUNDAY  DISCOURSE 

BEFORE    THE 

REFORM  CONGREGATION  &ENESETH  ISRAEL, 

BY 

RABBI  JOSEPH  KRAUSKOPP,  D.  D. 

Philadelphia,  Feb.  28th,  1004. 


Text :  "Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself."    I,EVIT.  xix,  18. 
SCRIPTURAL  I.ESSON  :  GENESIS,  xiv. 


Many  years  have  passed  since  I  have  read  the  Arabian 
Nights.  I  have  read  much  since,  and  have  forgotten  much  of 
what  I  have  read.  But  there  are  a  few  of  these 

...  ,1-1.1  1-  j  ^1        A  poor  woman. 

Arabian  tales  that  have  lingered  among  the 
fondest  memories  of  my  childhood.  One  of  these  is  the  story 
that  is  told  of  Khalif  Omar  and  a  poor  woman.  One  night, 
so  the  story  runs,  Omar  set  forth,  in  the  company  of  his  vizier, 
to  see  how  his  people  fared.  In  the  outskirts  of  a  town,  he 
noticed  a  burning  fire.  Drawing  near  it,  he  saw  a  woman 
boiling  some  water,  and  at  her  side  were  two  little  children 
groaning  piteously.  ' '  What  dost  thou  here,  in  the  open  field, 
and  in  the  cold  night,"  Omar  asked.  And  she  answered,  "  I 
am  boiling  some  roots  for  my  children,  who  are  perishing  of 
cold  and  hunger.  Our  misery  is  great,  but  for  it  Allah  will 
surely  some  day  ask  a  reckoning  of  Omar,  the  Khalif." 

The  Khalif,  who  was  in  disguise,  was  much  moved,  and 
he  said  to  her  "  Dost  thou  think,  O  woman,  that  Omar  knows 
of  thy  wretchedness,   seeing   that   he   does   not  Ho|ds  Khaljf  re 
relieve  it?"     To  which  she  answered:  "Where-  spon$:bie  for  her 
fore,  then,  is  Omar  the  Khalif,  if  he  be  unaware    mi8ery> 
of  the  misery  of  his  people?" 

The  Khalif  made  no  reply,  but  hastily  departed,  returned 
to  his  palace,  and  from  his  abundant  stores  drew  forth  a  large 

sack  of  flour  and  a  jar  of  sheep  fat,  and  asked 

,  .        .    .  i.   1      i_-        •       1-n..       '     .  ,  -       Khalif  relieves  her. 

his  vizier  to  help  him  m  lifting  these  upon  his 


iar 

back.  But  the  officer  said:  "Suffer  that  I  carry  them  upon 
my  back,  O  Commander  of  the  Faithful."  To  which  Omar 
replied,  "Wilt  thou  also  bear  the  weight  of  my  sins  on  the 
Day  of  the  Resurrection  ?' ' 

They  retraced  their  journey  to  the  poor  woman,  the 
Khalif  bent  low  under  the  burden  on  his  back.  And  when 
he  arrived  at  the  fire,  he  prepared  the  food  with  his  own 
hand,  quickened  the  fire  with  his  own  breath,  and  with  his 
own  breath  he  also  cooled  the  steaming  food,  so  that  the  three 
hungry  mouths  might  the  speedier  be  fed.  And  when  they 
had  their  fill,  he  went  away,  leaving  them  the  remainder  of 
the  flour  and  the  fat. 

On  his  homeward  journey  he  said  to  his  vizier:  "The 
fire  I  have  seen  to-night  has  lighted  also  the  darkness  of  my 

heart.     The  poor  woman  has  spoken  wiser  words 
"  t^ian    any   my  counsellors    have    ever  spoken. 

'  Wherefore  is  Omar  the  Khalif,  if  he  be  una- 
ware of  the  misery  of  his  people  ?'  ' 

The  part  of  the  story  that  touched  me  most  in  my  child- 
hood days  was  that  which  told  of  the  great  Omar  bent  low 

under   his   burden,   and   of  his   preparing   with 
*   '  ^s  own  ^an(^  tne  f°°d  for  the  poor  woman  and 

her  children.  I  was  fairly  moved  to  tears  at  the 
contemplation  of  the  scene  of  so  great  a  ruler  so  humbling 
himself  before  so  poor  a  woman. 

I  have  since  grown  in  years,  and  I  trust  also  in  wisdom. 
I  am  now  moved  much  more  by  what  that  poor  woman  said 

than  by  what  that  rich  monarch  did.     And  I 

110W  comprehend,  as  I  did  not  then,  the  force  of 

the  Khalif 's  words:  "  Wherefore  is  Omar  Khalif, 
if  he  be  unaware  of  the  misery  of  his  people?"  I  understand 
now  why  he  was  so  deeply  affected  by  them.  Their  truth 
lighted  into  his  heart.  Why  was  he  a  monarch,  if  not  to  pro- 
tect his  people  ?  For  what  purpose  did  his  government  exist, 
if  not  to  safeguard  the  rights  of  his  subjects  ?  Was  not  his 
realm  the  sufferer  by  such  sufferings;  was  it  not  in  danger,  if 
such  sufferings  were  unjust? 

Whether  his  subjects  were  thereafter  the  better  protected 
and  the  happier  by  reason  of  this  incident,  I  do  not  know. 


13 

But  I  do  know  that  many  of  our  political  ills  state  responslble 
would  cease,  if  those,  who  are  entrusted  with  for  wrongs  of  so- 
responsible  office,  our  emperors  and  kings,  presi-  c  e^' 
dents  and  legislators,  governors  and  mayors,  magistrates 
and  lower  officers,  were  to  ask  themselves:  "  Wherefore  do  I 
hold  office,  if  I  am  unaware  of  the  misery  of  my  people? 
Wherefore  has  government  been  formed,  wherefore  have  peo- 
ple banded  themselves  together  into  a  nation,  state  or  muni- 
cipality, wherefore  have  they  surrendered  many  of  their  indi- 
vidual liberties,  if  not,  in  return,  to  enjoy  the  protection  and 
aid  of  those  who  are  put  in  authority  over  them?" 

And  I  also  know  that  most  of  our  social  and  economical 
ills  would  cease,  if  each  of  us  were  to  ask  himself:   "  Where- 
fore am  I  a  human  being,  if  I  am   unaware  of 
the  misery  of  my  fellow-beings?     Wherefore  do  br°th" 


I  live  in  civilized  society,  and  enjoy  the  benefits 
of  civilization,  if  I  am  unaware  that  beings,  like  unto  myself, 
heirs  of  the  same  privileges,  children  of  the  same  God,  mem- 
bers of  the  same  family,  are  suffering  —  some  of  them  for  the 
want  of  food,  some  of  them  for  the  want  of  opportunity  for 
physical  and  moral  and  intellectual  health,  some  of  them  for 
the  want  of  liberty  and  justice."  I  know  that  most  of  our 
ills  would  cease,  if  we  would  forsake  the  standard  by  which 
our  selfishness  has  all  too  long  guided  its  course,  the  standard 
which  made  of  Cain  a  fratricide,  the  standard  that  dins  into  our 
ears  "  I  am  not  my  brother's  keeper.  It  is  no  concern  of  mine 
whether  my  neighbor  suffer  or  prosper,  whether  he  starve  or 
live  in  plenty,  whether  he  be  oppressed  or  enjoy  freedom, 
whether  he  be  without  schooling  or  enjoy  the  benefits  of 
education."  I  know  that  the  millenium  would  not  be  far  dis- 
tant, if  we  could  convert  our  egoism  into  altruism,  and  say  to 
ourselves:  "  I  am  my  brother's  keeper,  even  as  he  is  keeper  of 
me.  His  interests  are  as  sacred  to  me  as  mine  are  to  him. 
Whatever  profits  or  injures  him  profits  or  injures  me.  If  I 
neglect  him,  I  neglect  myself;  if  I  do  him  good,  I  benefit  myself. 
If  he  be  allowed  to  grow  up  ignorant  and  to  become  criminal, 
I  lessen  my  safety,  and  impose  burdens  upon  myself  for  the 
maintenance  of  penal  and  corrective  institutions  and  police 
protection.  If  he  be  allowed  to  spread  physical  and  moral 


14 

disease,  I  expose  myself  and  mine  to  his  contagion.  In  his 
curse  all  are  cursed;  in  his  blessing  all  are  blessed." 

I  know  that  there  are  those  who,  upon  hearing  this 
will  say:  "What  new-fangled  doctrine  is  this  alttuism,  this 
Altruism  regarded  concerning  oneself  about  the  affairs  of  others? 
a  new-fangled  doc-  I  have  more  than  I  can  do  to  look  after  my  own 
interests,  let  others  look  after  their  own.  If 
others  suffer  or  do  not  prosper,  the  fault  or  misfortune  is  theirs, 
not  mine;  and  it  is  for  them,  and  not  for  me,  to  look  to  the 
remedy.  This  is  some  more  nonsensical  twaddle  of  unpractical 
preachers,  who  are  everlastingly  talking  of  things  they  do  not 
understand,  and  trying  to  remedy  things  that  cannot  be 
remedied." 

I  admit,  the  word  alttuism  is  of  recent  date.  But  its  in- 
vention is  not  chargeable  to  the  pulpit.  It  was  coined  by  the 
philosopher  Comte,  and  was  made  popularly  cur- 
AS  old  as  mater  reut  jn  ^  vocabuiary  of  philosophical  language 

by  the  greatest  of  all  modern  philosophers,  Her- 
bert Spencer,  who  expounded  it  in  his  Data  of  Ethics,  and 
enthusiastically  championed  it  in  his  subsequent  ethical  teach- 
ings. And  both,  Comte  and  Spencer,  would  have  smiled,  had 
they  been  told  that  they  had  foisted  a  new-fangled  doctrine 
upon  the  world.  There  is  not  a  virtue  that  is  older  than  al- 
truism, neither  is  there  a  blessing  of  civilization  enjoyed  to- 
day that  is  not  due  to  it!  It  is  but  the  name  that  is  new;  the 
practice  of  it  commenced  when  the  first  mother  sacrificed  self 
for  others,  gave  life  of  her  life,  substance  of  her  substance, 
strength  of  her  strength,  for  her  children  and  children's  chil- 
dren, merging  her  individuality  in  others,  seeking  nothing  for 
herself,  finding  her  happiness  in  the  happiness  of  her  family, 
and  her  reward  in  their  physical  and  moral  well-being. 

And  the  teaching  of  it  as  a  duty  for  all  men  to  follow  be- 
gan when   the   Bible  entered  upon  its  mission  of  humanizing 

its  teachin  the  ^ae  ain'raal  H1  man-  Were  you  to  ask  what  one 
special  mission  of  ethical  message,  greater  than  any  other,  the  Jew 
sent  out  into  a  brutal  and  selfish  world  thousands 
of  years  ago,  I  would  unhesitatingly  answer:  the  message  of 
altruism.  And  were  you  to  ask  for  what  one  teaching,  more 
than  any  other,  the  Jew  will  one  day  receive  his  well  deserved 


15 

meed  of  praise,  I  would  as  unhesitatingly  answer:  the  teaching 
of  altruism.  There  is  no  ethical  duty  in  the  whole  Bible  more 
often  and  more  strongly  emphasized  than  that  of  furthering 
the  good  of  our  fellowmen. 

It  is  the  virtue  preached  and  practiced  in  our  Scripture 
lesson  of  to  day,  Abraham  freeing  the  captives,  refusing  com- 
pensation for  his  risk  and  cost  and  labor,  on  the  The  chief  trait  of 
ground  that  he  had  but  done  his  human  duty,  Biblii:al  and  Ta|- 

.  mudic  heroes. 

even  as  he  himself  would  have  wanted  to  be 
done  by  in  equal  need.  It  is  the  preaching  and  practice  of 
Moses.  Altruism  makes  him  cast  his  lot  with  a  slave-people, 
and  brings  him  into  the  presence  of  Pharaoh.  It  is  the  key- 
note of  his  Ten  Commandments,  of  his  entire  moral  code, 
reaching  its  climax  in  the  teaching  "Thou  shalt  love  thy 
neighbor  as  thyself." 

Altruism  is  the  fundamental  teaching  of  all  the  prophets. 
Their  one  unending  cry  is:  "  Have  we  not  all  one  Father,  hath 
not  one  God  created  us  all,  why  then  should  one  man  act 
treacherously  against  another?  If  others  wrong  thee  dost 
thou  not  feel  the  pain,  and  if  thou  art  hungry,  is  not  bread 
sweet  to  thee,  and  if  thou  art  naked  are  not  clothes  welcome  ? 
Therefore,  let  thy  brother  in  need  have  what  thou  wouldst  de- 
sire to  have  in  need.  Even  if  he  be  thine  enemy,  and  he  be 
hungry,  give  him  bread  to  eat;  and  if  he  be  thirsty,  give  him 
water  to  drink;  and  if  he  be  wronged,  see  that  justice  be  done 
to  him,  for  thus  alone  shalt  thou  have  peace,  and  thus  alone 
will  it  be  well  with  thee." 

And  altruism  is  the  constant  preaching  and  practice  of 
Jesus,  reaching  its  climax  in  the  golden  rule:  "  Do  unto  others 
as  thou  wouldst  have  others  do  unto  thee."  And  in  a  yet 
more  pronounced  degree  is  it  the  teaching  of  the  Talmud, 
reaching  its  climax  in  Hillel's  celebrated  maxim:  "  What  is 
hateful  unto  thee,  that  do  not  unto  another." 

So  we  see,  that  we  are  not  dealing  with  a  new-fangled 
doctrine,  when  we  speak  of  altruism.     It  is   an  old,  old  doc- 
trine, but  the  trouble  is  that,  though  very  old,   Though  a|trui8m 
and  though  it  has  been  preached  and  practiced   old,  it  is  still  un- 
by  our  wisest  men,  it  is  still  unlearned.     Our    ' 
eyes  are  still  too  blind  to  enable  us  to  see  that  we  never  labor 
for  self  so  much  as  when  we  labor  for  the  good  of  others. 


16 

What  even  some  of  the  lower  animals  have  learned,  we, 
who  title  ourselves  as  belonging  to  the  higher  animal  kingdom, 
are  too  stupid  to  grasp.  Read  Maeterlink's  77?^ 
jjfe  Of  the  Bee.  Study  the  revelation  the  bee- 
hive makes  of  the  ideal  organization,  of  co-ope- 
rative labor,  each  striving  for  all,  all  accumulating  for  each, 
no  exclusive  privileges  granted,  no  exceptions  made,  no  idler 
tolerated,  the  drone  killed  off  and  cast  out  of  the  hive,  all 
laboring,  not  for  the  present  alone,  but  for  the  future  as  well, 
storing  up  rich  treasures  of  food,  so  that  the  new  generation 
finds  rich  and  ample  supplies,  even  though  the  old  generation 
be  no  more.  Read  his  philosophical  reflections  in  that  book, 
his  frequent  contrasts  between  the  methods  of  man  and  those 
of  the  bee,  his  observations  on  the  infinite  superiority  of  the 
latter's  altruism  over  the  former.  "  What  being  more  fitted," 
he  asks,  "by  reason  and  destiny  than  man  to  organize  the 
ideal  society,  and  yet  what  blunder  he  makes  of  it!  .  .  .  Note 
the  equality  of  labor  and  of  its  benefits  in  the  hive,  and  the 
inequalities  in  human  society, — the  earth's  surface  painfully 
and  insufficiently  cultivated  by  two  or  three  tenths  of  the 
whole  population,  another  tenth  absolutely  idle,  usurping  the 
larger  share  of  the  products  of  this  first  labor,  and  the  remain- 
ing six  or  seven-tenths  condemned  to  a  life  of  perpetual  half- 
hunger,  ceaselessly  exhausting  themselves  in  strange  and 
sterile  efforts,  whereby  not  they  but  the  idle  alone  shall 
profit." 

vSee  the  provisions,  and  the  self-abnegation  within  the 
bee-hive  for  the  benefit  of  a  vigorous  and  prolific  progeny, 
and  contrast  this  with  the  dissipations  in  society,  thousands — 
not  unmindful  of  the  inexorable  law  of  heredity,  not  unmind- 
ful that  the  sins  of  the  parents  are  visited  upon  the  children 
and  children's  children — in  utter  selfishness,  in  utter  disregard 
of  the  suffering  and  misery  they  heap  upon  their  posterity, 
exhausting  their  vitality,  and  transmitting  unto  their  descend- 
ants enervated  and  diseased  constitutions,  corrupted  tastes, 
sterile  minds,  vicious  habits.  The  innocent  must  suffer  for 
the  guilty,  because  there  is  not  enough  of  altruism  to  sacrifice 
present  fleeting  pleasure  for  lasting  future  good. 


17 

Humiliating  as  it  is,  it  must  nevertheless  be  acknowledged 
that  if  even  but  a  small  part  of  the  justice  that  rules  the  bee- 
hive were  to  rule  society,  we  would  hear  infi- 
nitely  less  of  inequality,  and  infinitely  less  of 
suffering  and  wrong.  Except  the  very  young 
and  the  very  old,  no  one  would  be  permitted  to  enjoy  of  the 
accumulated  products  of  labor,  who  had  not  contributed  his 
proportionate  share  thereto;  and,  conversely,  no  one  would  be 
denied  his  proportionate  share  of  the  accumulated  products  of 
labor,  who  had  done  his  proportionate  share  of  the  work. 

With   one  stroke,   this  bee-philosophy   would    overthrow 
that  cruel  injustice  that  permits  tens  of  thousands  of  idlers  to 

live  on  the  fat  of  the  laud,  to  enjoy  the  richest 

,    ,  ,  ......  „.      ,  r          Would  prevent 

and  best  that  civilization   affords,  to  waste  for-   drones  fattening 

tunes  on  luxuries  and  extravagances,  while  those  fnd  workers  starv- 
who  produce  the  means  must  slave  from  dawn 
to  dusk,  must  clothe  in  rags,  live  in  hovels,  and  endure  "a 
perpetual  half-hunger"  all  their  life.  By  this  starving  out  of 
the  idlers  and  wasters;  of  them  who  unproductively  consume 
of  what  they  have  not  produced,  the  Mrs.  Bradley-Martins 
and  their  ilk,  we  would  have  ample  food  for  all,  and  less 
slavery  for  millions,  less  slums  and  tenements,  less  disease  and 
pauperism,  less  crime  and  vice,  less  aim-houses  and  peniten- 
tiaries, less  hospitals  and  orphanages. 

And  when  shall  we  do  this?     Just  as  soon   as  we  shall 
learn  to  understand  the  real   meaning  of  possession,  just   as 
soon  as  we  shall  understand  that  what  we  own   Have  not  yet  learn- 
we  but  hold  in  stewardship  for  the  benefit  of  all,   ed  "Caning  of 
that  as  countless  thousands  have  labored  to  make 
possible  what  we  possess,  so  must  countless  thousands  share 
with  us  the  benefits  that  it  yields. 

What  one  thing  is  there  to-day  of  which  we  can  say  it  is 
all  our  own  handiwork  ?  Millions  have  toiled  on  the  little 
educatioi)  you  and  I  possess.  For  the  liberty 
and  peace  you  and  I  enjoy,  tens  of  thousands 
have  fought  and  suffered  and  died.  The  health 
that  blesses  your  home  and  your  city  has  been  made  possible 
by  ten  thousand  students  in  sanitary  science.  On  the  break- 
fast which  you  enjoyed  this  morning,  a  thousand  hands  have 


i8 

labored,  the  wheat  was  raised  in  Dakota,  the  oat-meal  in  Min- 
nesota, the  butter  in  New  Jersey,  the  coffee  in  Java,  the  tea  in 
China,  the  eggs  and  milk  in  Pennsylvania,  the  salt  in  New 
York,  the  pepper  in  Brazil,  the  sugar  in  Louisiana,  the  meat 
in  Illinois,  the  fish  in  Maine,  the  potatoes  in  Ohio,  the  orange 
in  California,  the  banana  in  Florida,  the  knives  and  forks 
were  made  in  Connecticut,  the  dishes  in  Massachusetts,  the 
table  and  chairs  in  Michigan,  the  linen  in  Ireland.  For  the 
prosperity  you  enjoy,  a  million  of  hands  and  minds  have  toiled, 
during  a  thousand  years,  in  a  score  of  lands.  The  ore  of 
which  the  article  is  made  which  you  manufacture,  other  hands 
have  mined,  by  means  of  tools  which  again  other  hands  have 
made.  The  machineries  which  manufacture  your  article, 
other  minds  have  designed,  and  other  hands  have  constructed. 
The  railroad  or  ship,  which  transports  the  article  to  all  parts 
of  the  land,  other  minds  have  invented,  and  other  hands  have 
built.  Have  you,  therefore,  no  obligation  toward  your  fellow- 
beings?  Shall  you  reap  the  reward  of  other  men's  toil,  and 
other  men  have  no  share  in  it  ? 

L,ast  spring,  I  called  on  a  rich  manufacturer  of  this  city, 

for  a  subscription  to  a  higher  seat  of  learning.     He  refused, 

on  the  ground,  that  he  did  not  believe  in  higher 

The  egoism  of  self-  education    that  he  himself  had  never  had  more 

made  men. 

than  a  common  school  education,  and  he  could 
not  see  why  others  needed  more.  I  was  amazed  at  the  daring 
of  his  argument.  A  hundred  factors  and  more,  that  had  con- 
tributed toward  making  that  man's  fortune,  were  the  products 
of  scholarship.  Graduates  of  higher  schools  had  designed 
his  building,  his  engines,  his  elevators,  his  telephone,  his  elec- 
trical appliances,  and  what  not,  and  yet  would  that  man  not 
support  higher  education,  because  he  himself  had  never  en- 
joyed any. 

During  that  same  canvass,  another  party  refused  a  sub- 
scription, on  the  ground  that  no  one  gave  him  anything,  and 

lie  did  not  see  why  he  needed  to  give  anything 

Their  ingratitude. 

to  anybody,  \\hat  a  text  for  a  sermon!  No 
one  gave  him  anything!  He  buys  a  newspaper  for  a  penny, 
and  believes  he  pays  its  full  value.  He  rides  to  the  suburbs 
for  a  nickel  or  to  New  York  for  a  couple  of  dollars,  and  be- 


19 

lieves  lie  pays  full  value.  He  pays  a  few  paltry  dollars  in 
taxes,  and  believes  he  pays  for  all  the  school-education  his 
children  receive,  and  for  the  police-  and  fire-  and  health-protec- 
tion he  enjoys. 

I  shall  not  speak  of  those  numerous  persons  who  refused 
on  the  ground  that  they  could  not  afford  it,  albeit  that  they 
and  their  families  spend  their  summers  at  the 
sea  side,  or  on  the  mountain  top,  or  abroad,  and 
are  frequently  seen  at  the  theatres,  operas,  and 
fashionable  restaurants,  decked  out  in  the  finest  and  costliest. 
But  I  shall  speak  of  that  one,  who  gave  as  reason  for  refusing 
that  he  did  his  full  duty  by  his  fellowmen  by  contributing  to 
the  charities.  "  And  do  you  contribute  nothing  toward  pre- 
venting the  need  of  charity?"  I  asked.  The  man  stared  at 
me,  either  thinking  that  I  made  sport  of  him,  or  that  I  was 
stark  mad. 

Oh,  these  charity  contributions!  What  a  multitude  of 
sins  they  cover,  indeed!  By  sins  of  omission  and  commission 
men  help  to  bring  on,  on  the  one  side,  the  A|trujsm  prevents 
wretched  condition  of  the  poor,  their  exhaustion  need  of  remedial 
and  congestion  and  consumption,  their  filth  and  chanty> 
vice  and  crime,  and,  on  the  other  side,  they  try  to  cure  this 
virulent  disease  of  society  by  applying  a  few  charity  plasters 
here  and  there.  What  if  Holland  had  attempted  to  put  a 
plaster  here,  and  a  plaster  there  to  keep  out  the  ocean  tides 
that  roll  down  her  low-lying  shores!  By  erecting  powerful 
dikes,  and  watching  them  with  eagle's  eyes,  and  repairing  in- 
stantly the  slightest  damage,  has  she  kept  out  her  most  dan- 
gerous foe,  and  has  saved  herself  from  being  engulfed.  What 
if  we  had  kept  out  the  floods  of  pauperism  as  Holland  barred 
out  the  ocean  tides!  What  if  our  altruism  had  raised  a  wall 
of  protection  around  our  needy  classes,  and  had  guarded  it  as 
Holland  guards  her  dikes,  and  repaired  even  the  slightest 
damage  as  soon  as  discovered!  What  if  we  had  prevented 
their  congestion,  by  wisely  scattering  them;  and  their  filthy 
environments,  by  giving  them  healthy  homes;  and  their  phys- 
ical exhaustion,  by  employing  them  in  invigorating  labor; 
and  their  moral  degeneracy,  by  supplying  their  moral  and 
spiritual  wants;  and  their  perpetual  half-hunger,  by  giving 


20 

them  sufficient  food !  How  many  thousands  of  lives  might  we 
not  have  rescued!  '  How  many  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dol- 
lars might  we  not  have  saved! 

Ah,  yes,  we  have  yet  to  learn  that  altruism  is  profitable, 
and  as  much  to  him  from  whom  it  comes,  as  to  him  toward 
in  being  just  to  whom  it  is  extended.  As  only  the  best  social 
others,  we  are  just  order  can  make  possible  our  best  advance,  so,  if 
but  for  self-interest,  the  creation  of  the  best  social 
order  must  be  our  higher  end.  As  we  find  our  truest  joy  when 
others  enjoy  with  us,  so  do  we  find  our  truest  prosperity  when 
others  prosper  with  us.  Whatever  heightens  the  .strength  of 
society  decreases  our  weakness;  whatever  lessens  its  want  and 
vice  and  crime  heightens  the  peace  of  our  homes,  and  the 
safety  of  our  families.  Of  every  dollar  we  spend  on  the  pro- 
motion of  the  good  of  others,  we  expend  ninety-nine  cents  on 
ourselves.  Nothing  pays,  in  the  long  run,  so  large  a  dividend 
as  being  just,  and  seeing  that  justice  is  done  toward  others, 
and  upholding  the  agencies  for  the  ministration  of  justice. 
Once  we  shall  have  the  true  love  of  man  in  our  hearts,  it  will 
show  itself  also  in  the  words  of  our  mouth,  in  the  deeds  of 
our  hand,  in  the  aspirations  of  our  soul.  Egoism  will  then 
change  to  altruism.  The  love  of  self  will  lose  and  find  itself 
in  the  peace  and  happiness  of  all. 


3amfl  flf  Sta- 
in—PESSIMISM. 


A  SUNDAY  DISCOURSE 

BEFORE    THE 

REFORM  CONGREGATION  KENESETH  ISRAEL, 

BY 

RABBI  JOSEPH  KRAUSKOPF,  D.  D. 

Philadelphia,  March  6th,  1404. 


Text :  "Joy  is  withered  away  from  the  sons  of  men."    JOEL  i,  12. 
SCRIPTURAL  WESSON  :  ECCLESIASTES,  in. 


If  there  is  one  fault  greater  than  any  other  that  human 
flesh  is  heir  to,  it  is  the  fault  of  making  sweeping  generaliza- 
tions. The  whole  generally  suffers  for  the  part. 
The  sins  of  the  individual  are  visited  upon  his 
family,  creed  or  nationality.  Some  Irishman 
drinks,  some  German  is  vulgar,  a  Frenchman  deceives,  a  Cath- 
olic is  bigoted,  a  Jew  is  loud,  and  the  generalization  is  made 
that  all  Irishmen  drink,  all  Germans  are  vulgar,  all  French- 
men deceive,  all  Catholics  are  bigoted,  all  Jews  are  loud,  and 
in  the  ' '  want ' '  columns  of  your  newspapers  you  read  that 
none  of  these  people  need  apply.  Some  employer  oppresses 
his  laborers,  some  laborer  takes  advantage  of  his  employer, 
some  preacher  belies  his  preaching,  and  you  are  sure  to  hear 
or  read  that  all  employers  are  oppressors,  all  laborers  rogues, 
all  preachers  hypocrites.  There  is  little  remembrance  of  the 
Irishmen  who  fought  for  the  preservation  of  our  Union;  of  the 


22 

Germans  and  Frenchmen  whose  volunteer  service  in  the  War 
of  the  Revolution  helped  to  gain  our  Independence;  of  Catho- 
lics and  Jews  whose  brain  and  industry  enrich  our  Nation;  of 
employers  and  employees  who  promote  each  others'  good;  of 
preachers  whose  lives  are  consecrated  to  the  elevation  of  society. 
Perhaps  we  ought  not  to  complain,  seeing  that  God  Him- 
self is  subjected  to  similar  sweeping  generalizations.  Ac- 
cording to  the  plaint  of  many,  God  has  made  a 
dismal  failure  of  His  creation.  Life  is  worse 
than  a  mistake,  it  is  a  crime.  There  is  not  a  day 
that  is  worth  its  living,  not  an  hour  that  is  not  full  of  trials 
and  tribulations.  The  sound  of  weeping  is  louder  than  the 
sound  of  laughter,  and  the  days  of  storm  far  more  numerous 
than  the  hours  of  sunshine.  God  indulges  in  nothing  so 
much  as  in  afflicting  his  people,  and  nothing  delights  Him 
more  than  looking  upon  the  misery  of  them,  whom,  without 
their  will,  He  has  brought  into  this  vale  of  sorrows. 

This  pessimistic  view  of  God's  rulership  over  this  earth 

is  by  no  means  a  newly  acquired  habit.     It  has  come  down  to 

us  with  many  another  absurd  and  pernicious  be- 

HfleionmiSm  '"  r9"  lief  of  the  Past  At  one  time>  ifc  constituted  al- 
most all  that  there  was  of  religion.  To  hold  to 
the  belief  that  this  earth  was  under  the  curse  of  an  angry 
God  constituted  true  piety;  to  deny  it  meant  heresy,  and  often 
brought  death. 

What  is  much  of  the  theology  that  has  been  spun  from, 
or  that  has  been  woven  into  the  texture  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment but  a  form  of  pessimism  ?  Because  Eve  ate  of  the  for- 
bidden fruit,  all  her  descendants  are  under  the  wrath  of  God, 
a  wrath  which  not  even  the  blood  of  His  only  begotten  Son 
has  been  able  to  appease,  a  wrath  which  can  be  atoned  only 
by  slaying  the  flesh  and  by  mortifying  the  senses,  by  closing 
eye  and  ear  to  all  that  is  beautiful  and  joyous,  by  adopting  a 
life  of  asceticism  and  celibacy,  by  spurning  every  earthly  in- 
terest and  concentrating  every  concern  upon  the  life  to  come. 

To  our  credit,  however,  be  it  said,  that  pessimistic  reli- 
gion is  on  the  wane.  Light  and  life,  song  and  sunshine  have 


23 

entered  the  church,  and  have  driven  out  much 

of  the  graveyard  gloom  that  once  prevailed  there. 

The  Old  Testament  conception  of  "serving  God 

with  joy,"    of  "  appearing  before  Him  with  gladness,"    "of 

praising  Him  with  the  trumpet  and  the  harp,  with  the  timbrel 

and  the  cymbal"  is  reasserting  itself. 

But  in  the  same  proportion  as  pessimism  is  driven  out  of 
theology,  it  is  increasing  its  hold  on  those  arrayed  against 
religion.  Schopenhauer  is  their  god,  and  Nietz-  But  strengthening 
sche  his  greatest  prophet.  Their  disciples  and  amon9  "nbeiiev- 
apostles  and  devotees  are  encountered  every- 
where. In  one  of  the  sublimest  regions  of  the  Alps,  where 
the  glory  of  God  and  the  beauty  of  His  handiwork  seemed 
almost  to  speak  to  man,  I  came  across  a  gentleman  poring  over 
a  volume  entitled  "  Aphorisms  From  the  Writings  of  Schopen- 
hauer." While  reading,  aboard  the  steamer,  a  volume  of 
Nietzsche's  writings,  which  I  had  picked  up  abroad  for  the 
purpose  of  discovering  the  spell  he  exercises  upon  large  num- 
bers of  the  reading  public,  I  was  accosted  by  a  supercilious 
fellow  passenger,  with  the  words:  "  Ah,  so  you,  too,  are  one  of 
us!"  "  What  do  you  mean  by  being  '  one  of  us'  ?"  I  asked, 
to  which  he  replied:  "  A  Nitzscheite,  one  of  those  who  recog- 
nize that  God  and  the  belief  in  God  have  made  a  failure  of 
this  earthly  life,  one  of  those  who  are  honest  enough  to  think 
and  to  say  that  man  is  more  than  God,  more  than  religion  or 
law,  that  he  is  his  own  God,  his  own  law,  his  own  right." 
"  No"  said  I,  "  I  am  not  one  of  you.  'I  am  not  yet  ready  to 
go  to  the  madhouse,  whither  Nitzsche  went,  and  where  he 
ended." 

As  yet.  the  number  of  those  who  go  to  the  extremes  of 
Nietzsche  are  small,  in  comparison  with  those  who  do  homage 
to    his    master.     Schopenhauer    fairly  rules    the  Schopenhauer 
mind  of  Europe.      Its   literature,    press,   drama,    rules  mind  of  Eu- 
its  politics,  its  industrial  world,  its  higher  and   rope- 
lower   society   seern    permeated    with    pessimism.      The    chief 
writers   of   Scandinavia,    France,    Russia    write    it;    the    chief 
play-wrights  of  Germany,  Italy,  Spain  enact    it.     In  certain 


24 

quarters  it  has  become  a  cult,  and  almost  religious  honors  are 
shown  to  the  memory  of  its  chief  oracle. 

Let  us  hear  Schopenhauer's  message  to  the  world,  and 
examine  the  foundations  upon  which  its  wide-spread  and  fast- 
growing  popularity  is  reared.  His  all-embrac- 
°8pessimism.  *n£  doctrine  is:  This  is  the  worst  possible  world. 
There  is  nothing  but  evil.  Happiness  is  a 
chimera;  suffering  alone  is  a  reality.  The  misery  which 
abounds  everywhere,  and  the  obvious  imperfections  of  earth's 
highest  product,  man,  make  it  impossible  to  believe  that  this 
world  is  the  successful  work  of  an  all-wise,  all-good,  and,  at 
the  same  time,  all-powerful  Being.  L,ife  is  but  a  disappoint- 
ment and  a  cheat;  man  but  a  shipwrecked  sailor,  struggling 
with  might  and  main  to  keep  himself  from  drowning, — only  to 
sink  at  last;  or  this  earth  is  a  penitentiary,  where  the  con- 
demned of  some  other  life  suffer  the  penalties  for  their  former 
crimes.  It  would  be  far  more  appropriate  to  address  man  as 
"  My  Fellow- Sufferer"  than  as  '"  My  Dear  Sir."  The  brute 
has  in  every  way  the  advantage  over  man.  It  is  spared  the 
fear  of  to-morrow's  cares  or  pains,  and  the  remembrance  of 
past  sorrows  and  disappointments  and  failures.  The  nearer  a 
man  is  to  the  brute,  the  more  stupid  and  obtuse  a  man  is,  the 
greater  is  his  advantage  over  the  man  of  culture;  unattainable 
ideals  do  not  haunt  him,  and  he  is  spared  painful  disillusions. 
Culture  only  makes  man  more  susceptible  to  pain,  only  makes 
him  see  all  the  clearer  the  follies  and  wrongs  and  cruelties  of 
life,  only  makes  him  sympathize  with  the  sorrows  of  others, 
thereby  adding  yet  more  sorrow  to  his  own.  Of  what  use  is 
cherishing  ideals,  seeing  that  their  attainment  is  impossible,  or 
that  they  are  but  bubbles  when  attained.  Even  love  is  but  a 
delusion,  and  woman  a  snare,  and  he  that  hates  woman  most 
spares  himself  infinite  evil.  Man's  worst  enemy  is  his  fellow- 
man.  Might  constitutes  right.  The  many  must  slave  and 
starve  that  the  few  may  rule  and  ruin.  The  rich  oppress  the 
poor;  the  poor  hate  the  rich.  The  great  despise  the  small; 
the  small  envy  the  great.  As  wild  beasts  are  kept  apart  by 
means  of  iron  cages  so  are  men  held  from  falling  upon  each 
other  by  means  of  police  force,  armaments,  and  criminal  law. 


25 

The  best  thing  that  can  be  said  of  life  is  Finis,  "it  is  fin- 
ished;" the  only  cure  for  all  its  ills  is  a  universal  holocaust  of 
suicide. 

Thus  spake  and  philosophized  Schopenhauer,  the  head  of 
the  school  of  pessimism,  and  thus  speak  and  write  his  thou- 
sands of  followers.     But,  the  curious  thing  about 
it  is    this,   only  the   fewest   of  them,   like    their 
master,    really   believe   what   they    preach,    and 
practice  what  they  profess. 

A  more  notoriously  inconsistent  philosopher  than  Schopen- 
hauer has  probably  never  lived.  No  man  complains  more  bit- 
terly of  man's  ill  treatment  of  his  fellovvmen 
than  he,  and  yet  few  men  attack  their  critics  as 
ferociously  as  he.  No  man  emphasizes  more 
strongly  than  he  that  the  true  toiler  for  the  good  of  man  must 
not  look  for  reward,  yet  few  men  are  as  eager  for  recognition, 
as  hungry  for  fame  and  honor,  as  savage  and  melancholy  when 
ignored,  as  he.  He  denounces  vanity,  and  yet  speaks  with 
ecstasy  of  his  system  of  philosophy,  declares  Hegel  and 
Schleiermacher  charlatans,  compared  with  him,  mentions  with 
pride  a  certain  person  buying  his  portrait,  "in  order  to 
place  it  in  a  kind  of  chapel,  like  the  image  of  a  saint."  He 
preaches  stoicism,  and  lives  the  life  of  an  epicure.  He  de- 
nounces the  lusts  of  the  flesh,  and  freely  indulges  them.  He 
speaks  of  the  filthiness  of  lucre,  and  in  his  avariciousness 
robs  even  his  mother  and  sister.  He  insults  women  and  warns 
against  love,  yet  goes  into  a  fit  of  madness  because  his  offer 
of  marriage  is  refused.  He  preaches  the  gospel  of  suicide, 
and  yet  lives  his  seventy-two  years,  desires  to  round  out  a  cen- 
tury, is  in  constant  fear  of  death,  hastens  from  Naples  in  fear 
of  small-pox;  from  Verona,  in  fear  of  poison  being  mixed 
with  his  snuff;  from  Berlin,  in  fear  of  cholera;  is  afraid  to 
shave  himself,  in  fear  of  cutting  himself  with  the  razor;  is 
afraid  to  drink  from  any  but  his  own  glass,  in  fear  of  conta- 
gious disease.  He  teaches  resignation  and  pity,  yet  selfish- 
ness is  his  ruling  passion.  He  is  utterly  indifferent  to  the 
sorrows  of  his  fellowmen,  is  wholly  lacking  in  sympathy  and 
love.  He  rails  at  the  tyranny  of  authority,  at  the  right  of 


26 

might  and  numbers,  yet  speaks  of  patriotism  as  ".the  passion 
of  fools,  and  the  most  foolish  of  passions,"  arrays  himself 
against  the  people  by  aiding  the  soldiers,  and  to  these  and  to 
his  dog  he  leaves  his  property. 

Nothing  can  be  clearer  than  that  the  pessimism  of  Schopen- 
hauer was    woven    of    threads  of   madness,   egoism,   conceit, 
mental  and  stomachal  dyspepsia.     And  of  these 

Some  pessinvsm  threads   has  been  spun  much  of  the  pes- 

due  to  dyspepsia. 

simism  I  have  met  with  in  life. 

What  a  scold  Carlyle  was!  In  his  eyes,  nothing  was  right 
in  the  generation  in  which  he  lived.  It  was  "barren  and 
brainless,  soulless  and  faithless."  His  favorite  simile  for  his 
contemporaries  was  that  of  "  apes  chattering  on  the  shores  of 
the  Dead  Sea."  And  yet,  that  very  age  contributed  more 
toward  the  uplift  of  man  than  did  a  dozen  ages  preceding  it. 
And  had  you  enjoyed  the  confidence  of  Mrs.  Carlyle,  she 
would  probably  have  told  you  how  often  the  prescriber  for 
others  needed  a  good  dose  of  his  own  medicine.  And  should 
you  care  to  know  the  cause  of  this  Carlylian  pessimism,  you 
need  but  consult  his  biographer  Froude,  and  he  will  tell  you 
that  it  was  clue  to  a  bad  case  of  chronic  dyspepsia. 

You  remember  Kmerson's  saying  that  when  a  man's  bile 
is  in  good  working  order,  he  is  a  Unitarian,  but  when  out  of 
order  he  is  a  Calvanist,  and  a  Calvanist  is  about  as  bad  a 
species  of  pessimist  as  you  will  find,  except  it  be  a  reform- 
hating  Jewish  pseudo-orthodox.  There  are  a  lot  of  biles  out 
of  order,  and  their  disorder  is  responsible  for  a  lot  of  mischief. 
I  know  a  man  of  great  ability,  but  whose  heart  is  diseased  by 
a  too  plenteous  secretion  of  bile.  His  tongue  is  more  venom- 
ous than  that  of  a  viper,  his  thrust  deeper  than  that  of  sword. 
Taken  to  task,  one  day,  for  the  cruelty  of  his  tongue,  he  said 
to  the  offended:  "  Had  you  inherited  as  bad  a  liver  as  mine, 
you  would  be  as  bitter  as  I."  He  poses  as  a  paragon;  forever 
lashing  others  for  lacking  virtues  which  he  does  not  possess, 
and  for  possessing  traits  which  he  does  not  lack;  believing 
nothing,  yet  accusing  others  of  unbelief;  observing  nothing, 
yet  charging  others  with  laxity;  openly  violating  orthodox 


27 

customs  and  laws,  even  the  orthodox  Sabbath,  yet  bewailing 
the  unorthodoxy  of  the  age,  and  asking  others  to  strengthen 
the  religion  which  by  him  is  "more  honored  in  the  breach 
than  the  observance." 

And  I  know  of  a  band  of  men,  some  of  them  confessed 
unbelievers,  some  of  them   totally  indifferent  to  the  claims  of 
the  synagogue,  who  make  it  their  orthodox  duty 
to  have  their  fling,  every  now  and  then,  at  those,    Som*  to  e.nv'ous 

egotism  or  failure. 

who  minister,  according  to  their  lights,  to  the 
religious  needs  of  their  community,  at  those  who  teach  the 
young  and  the  old,  comfort  and  strengthen  the  sorrowing  and 
suffering,  bring  back  those  that  have  strayed  away,  implant 
in  the  hearts  of  thousands  a  love  of  God  and  a  love  of  man. 
The  pessimism  of  these  people,  wherever  it  is  not  a  case  of 
Carlylian  dyspepsia,  is  generally  Schopenhauerian  egotism,  con- 
ceit or  failure.  Whenever  you  encounter  a  severe  case  of  pes- 
simism, you  will  generally  find  back  of  it  a  hypochondriac  or 
a  malcontent,  a  misfit  or  a  failure,  some  disappointed  climber, 
some  envious  egotist,  some  one  whose  brain  is  overworked  or 
whose  nerves  are  overstrained,  some  one  in  whom  bile  takes 
the  place  of  brain,  and  spleen  the  place  of  milk  of  human 
kindness,  someone  whose  eyes  as  well  as  stomach,  whose  mind 
as  well  as  mouth,  need  a  thorough  anti-septic  wash. 

If  I   cannot  go  all  the  way  with  Alexander  Pope  in  his 
teaching    "Whatever  is,  is  right,"  I  certainly  would  have  to 
be  blind  or  mad,  before  I  could  subscribe  to  pes- 
simism's gospel,  "Whatever  is,  is  wrong."      Of   There  is  much  evil 

but  more  good. 

course,  there  is  much  that  is  wrong  in  this  world, 
and  I  am  not  quite  sure  whether  an  absolutely  wrongless  world 
would  be  a  very  desirable  place  for  such  as  you  and  I  to  live 
in.  The  sprouting  of  our  wings  would  have  to  make  consid- 
erable headway,  before  you  and  I  could  be  considered  fit  to 
live  as  angels  among  angels.  But,  while  conscious  of  much 
that  is  wrong,  why  should  we  increase  it  by  shutting  our  eyes 
to  the  abundance  of  good  that  surges  about  us  ? 

It  is  true,  there  is  much  enmity  between  man  and  man, — 
wars  are  waged;  innocent  blood  is  shed;  suffering  is  inflicted, 


28 

capital  and  labor  stand  arrayed  against  each  other 
with  gauntleted  hands,— but  does  that  justify  us 
in  making  the  sweeping  generalization  that  only 
evil  obtains  between  man  and  man  ?  What  of  the  noble  deeds 
of  philanthropy,  of  the  magnificent  institutions  of  benevo- 
lence, of  the  devotion  and  self-sacrifice  of  sisters  of  mercy,  of 
nurses  on  the  battlefield!  What  of  the  Florence  Nightingales, 
the  Father  Damiens!  What  of  our  Toynbee  Halls,  our  Hull 
Houses,  our  College  Settlements,  our  Juvenile  Aid  Societies, 
our  Old  Folks  Homes!  What  of  the  Drexel  Institutes,  the 
Cornell  Universities,  the  Cocoran  Art  Galleries,  the  Carnegie 
Libraries! 

It  is  true,  there  is  corruption  in  politics;  offices  are  bought; 

voters  are  bribed.    What  of  such  men  as  Congressman  Shafroth, 

of  Colorado,  who  voluntarily  surrenders  his  seat 

Honesty  outweighs  discovering  that  voles  had  been  fraudently 

corruption.  J 

cast  in  his  favor!  What  of  such  Senators  as  Hoar 
of  Massachusetts,  nearly  thirty  years  a  member  of  the  Senate, 
and  yet  a  poor  man! 

It  is  true,  there  is  pain,  in  this  world.      Does  this  justify 

the  sweeping  generalization  that  a  devil  and  not  a  God  rules 

this  earth  ?     What   of  our  golden  harvests,  our 

Happiness   out-      fragrant    flowers,     our    winged     choristers,    our 

weighs  pain. 

limpid  springs!  Are  there  not  a  thousand  smiles 
for  every  sigh,  a  thousand  laughters  for  ever}-  tear,  a  thou- 
sand zephyrs  for  every  blast  of  storm!  Do  not  a  thousand 
thanksgivings  wing  their  flight  every  night,  for  every  curse 
that  is  hissed.  Do  not  ten  thousand  men  start  out  every 
morning  on  work  of  righteousness  for  every  one  that  sneaks 
along  the  devious  way  of  crime! 

It  is  true,  others  possess  much  more  of  earthly  goods  than 
3'ou  or  I;  it  is  true,  some  of  us  have  no  more  than  the  mere 
necessities  of  life.  But  it  does  not  yet  follow  that  we  are, 
therefore,  miserable, — that  we  may  not,  with  all  our  little, 
have  a  happiness  of  our  own,  which  all  the  treasure  of  the 
world  cannot  purchase. 

It  is  true,  higher  culture  has  made  us  more  susceptible  to 
pain  and  commiseration,  but  it  has  also  enabled  us  to  conquer 
no  end  of  ills  that  once  cursed  human  existence. 


29 

It  is  true,  there  is  oppression  and  persecution  and  extrava- 
gance, but  it  is  also  true  we  are  nearer  the  brotherhood  of 

man  than  we  have  ever  been  before.     We  are 

t       ••          •»«•        1  11  1-1  The  human  out- 

not  going  back.     Moral  as  well  as  physical  evo-   weighstheanimal. 

lution  is  forward  and  upward.  The  golden  age 
lies  in  front  of  us;  the  age  of  the  brute  is  in  the  rear.  Where 
are  those  slaveries  and  tyrannies  that  blackened  former  ages! 
Where  are  the  debaucheries  and  extravagances  that  once  scan- 
dalized such  courts  as  those  of  Louis  XIV  and  XV,  of  Charles 
II  of  England,  and  Catherine  of  Russia!  Where  are  the 
bigotries  that  once  kept  the  Torquemadas  and  the  Catherine 
de  Medicis  busy  with  burning  and  butchering  people! 

No,  there  is  no  occasion  for  pessimism;  on  the  contrary, 
there  is  much  ground  for  congratulation.  The  world  is  grad- 
ually growing  better,  and  I  believe  it  would  im-  Easler  to  find  fault 
prove  much  faster,  if  we  had  less  croaking  grum-  than  to  live  fault- 
biers,  and  more  active  co-laborers  in  the  rearing 
of  our  earthly  paradise.  How  much  easier  it  is  to  cry  that 
the  world  is  all  wrong  than  to  help  making  it  right!  How 
much  easier  it  is  to  throw  stones  than  to  lay  stones!  How 
much  easier  to  pick  flaws  than  to  live  faultlessly!  How  much 
easier  to  see  the  mote  in  others'  eyes  than  to  pluck  the  beam 
from  our  own! 

There  is  no  difficulty  in  finding  evil,  when  you  look  for 
it,  and  if  you  look  long  enough,  you  will  find  even  more  than 
you  expected  to  find.     It  was  thus  that  Hamlet 
started  to  look  for  evil.     It  was  not  long  before   "atrc^watch' harm 
he  saw  ghosts;   not   long  before   he  found  time 
"out   of  joint;"   not  long   before   his  own   mind  was   out  of 
joint;  not  long  before  a  mother,  a  betrothed,  a  friend,  himself, 
and  yet  others,  paid  with  their  lives  for  the  folly  of  looking 
only  for  evil  in  a  world  full  of  good. 

There  are  mysteries,  of  course,  but  we  can  trust  to  God 
to  solve  them,  in  His  own  time,  and  in  His  own  way.  Enough, 
if  we  solve  what  is  given  us  to  solve,  and  do  Doing  good  leaves 

what  is  given  us  to  do.     With  such   work  on   little  time  for  find- 

ing  evil, 
hand,  there   is    little   time   left  for   looking  for 

things  to  grumble  about,  nor  sufficient  leisure  for  advocating 


30 

or  contemplating  suicide.  When  Faust  found  himself  with 
nothing  to  do  but  to  brood,  the  poison-cup  was  near  his  lips. 
When  the  Easter  chant  recalled  him  to  life  and  duty  and  faith, 
when  the  angel  chorus  bade  him  "to  burst  his  prison  and  to 
break  his  gloom,"  he  put  down  the  fatal  draught,  and  ended 
with  building  dikes  to  keep  out  the  sea,  with  draining  marshy 
plains  and  stagnant  pools,  with  turning  over  to  the  millions 
fertile  fields  for  active  toil,  by  whJch  to  sustain  themselves  and 
with  which  to  bless  mankind. 


Jama  of  ofa-iag. 

IV— OPTIMISM. 


A  SUNDAY  DISCOURSE 

BEFORE    THE 

REFORM  CONGREGATION  KENESETH  ISRAEL, 

BY 

RABBI  JOSEPH  KRAUSKOPF,  D.  D. 

Philadelphia,  March  isth,  1004. 


Text :  "The  I<ord  reigneth, ;  let  the  earth  rejoice."    PSALM  xcvn,  i. 
SCRIPTUKAL  WESSON  :  PSALM  civ. 


Give  me  the  first  chapter  of  ' '  Mrs.  Wiggs  of  the  Cabbage 
Patch,"  and  you  can  have  almost  all  of  the  hundreds  of  works 
of  fiction  that  have  been  ground  out  within 
recent  years.  That  little  book  of  Alice  Cald well  cab'ba^Tatch  ** 
Hegan  acts  upon  the  soul  and  mind  like  a  tonic. 
Like  a  sojourn  on  some  invigorating  Alpine  height  or  within 
some  restful,  rural  retreat  is  the  breathing  of  the  atmosphere 
that  permeates  the  eleven  short  chapters  of  that  book.  Like  at- 
tending a  divine  service,  and  giving  ear  to  the  utterances  of 
some  wise  and  good  minister,  is  the  listening  to  the  philoso- 
phy of  Mrs.  Wiggs,  the  sum  and  substance  of  which  is  "to 
keep  the  dust  off  one's  rose-colored  spectacles." 

She  is  a  poor  woman,  this  Mrs.  Wiggs,  so  poor,  that  she 
is  obliged  to  live  in  one  of  those  ram -shackle  hovels  that  gen- 
erally abound  along  the  tracks  near  railroad 
yards,  and  from  which  the  rain  is  kept  out  by  s  ls  p°°crhggtrfu| 
means  of  the  tin  taken  from  discarded  tin-cans 
in  the  ash-barrels;  so  poor,  that,  to  keep  the  cold  out, 
she  is  obliged  to  paste  paper  over  the  broken  window-panes, 
and,  to  keep  the  warmth  in,  she  is  necessitated  to  wrap  her 
children  in  their  bed-clothes,  and  huddle  them  around  the 
meagre  kitchen-fire;  so  poor,  that  her  oldest  boy,  fifteen  years 
of  age,  is  obliged  to  sell  his  coat  in  mid-winter,  so  that  the 
few  pennies  realized  might  go  toward  the  rent. 


32 

And  yet,  wretched  as  her  little  hovel  is,  its  wretchedness 
cannot  darken  the  sunshine  within  her  soul,  nor  freeze  the 
cheer  within  her  heart,  nor  make  her  blind  to  the  bright  side 
in  all  things  and  in  every  body.  Though  her  teeth  are  "chat- 
tering in  her  head  like  a  pair  of  castanets,"  she  greets  one  of 
the  bitterest  winter  mornings  with  the  words  "My,  but  it's 
nice  an'  cold  this  mornin' !  the  thermometer  's  done  fell  up  to 
zero!"  Though  her  husband  was  a  scapegrace,  and  "  travelled 
to  eternity  by  the  alcohol  road,"  and  left  her  nothing  but  her 
poverty,  she  is  fond  of  dwelling  upon  the  only  thing  she  could 
say  in  his  favor,  "the  fine  hand  he  wrote."  Her  little  home 
burns  down,  yet  her  only  comment  is,  "Thank  God,  it  was 
the  pig  instid  of  the  baby  that  was  burned!"  Scant  is  the 
"  pertater  soup,"  yet  not  so  scant  but  that  a  few  more  hungry 
children  can  not  share  it.  Small  as  is  her  hovel,  it  is  not  too 
small  for  her  to  conduct  a  Sunday  School  for  the  benefit  of 
the  neglected  children  of  the  ramshackle  neighborhood,  and 
for  sending  the  children  home  with  the  Golden  Text  "It's 
sinful  to  fuss,"  and  with  the  prayer,  "O  Lord!  make  'em 
thankful  fer  whatever  they've  got,  even  if  it  ain't  but  a  little," 
and  with  the  doxology,  "  Praise  God  from  whom  all  blessin's 
flow!" 

What  a  blessing  to  the  poor,  this  wearing  of  rose  colored 
spectacles,  and  this  keeping  them  clear  of  dust!  And  what  a 

Tha  optimism  of       blessing   also    to   tne  ricn-  for>  if  the   truth   were 
the  poor  a  bless-  known,  it  would  probably  be  found,  that  many 

more  dusty  and  dark-colored  glasses  are  worn  by 
the  rich  than  by  the  poor.  Hope  is  a  better  friend  to  the  poor 
than  wealth  is  to  the  rich.  The  darkness  of  the  poor  is  very 
apt  to  be  illumined  by  the  hope  of  a  brighter  day  dawning; 
their  burden  is  very  apt  to  be  lightened  by  the  faith  that  ulti- 
mately all  will  be  shown  to  have  been  for  the  best.  If  the 
}  oor  have  but  little  chance  for  pleasure,  they  have  generally 
enough  of  wisdom  to  make  the  most  of  the  least. 

My  rounds  among  the  rich  and  poor,  assure  me  that  the 
laughter  of  the  rich  seldom  equals  in  joyousness  that  of  the 

poor.     They  who  have  much  of  the  good  of  this 

world  often  have  little  of  the  sPirit  of  apprecia- 
tioii.     The  sated  mouth  is  hard  to  please;  and 


33 

the  filled  purse  is  difficult  to  content.  They  whose  lot  is  cast 
on  the  sunniest  heights,  often  see  the  sun  rise  and  set  along 
the  darkest  horizon.  There  is  always  something  or  another 
to  dread,  some  rainy  day  to  fear,  some  calamity  to  anticipate. 

A  gentleman,  being  complimented,  one  day,  upon  the  ele- 
gance and  completeness  of  his  new  home,  remarked  that  a 
serious  mistake  had  been  made  in  its  construction,  that  he  did 
not  know  how  he  would  ever  get  a  coffin  down  the  narrow 
stairway.  And  I  have  been  told  of  a  lady,  who  has  just  com- 
pleted a  magnificent  new  home,  in  which,  among  no  end  of 
sanitary  equipments,  one  room  has  been  fitted  up  as  a  little 
pharmacy,  and  the  floor  and  ceiling  and  windows  and  walls  of 
another  room  have  been  constructed  to  answer  the  purposes  of 
an  operating  room,  in  case  of  emergency.  She  prides  herself 
on  her  wisdom  in  looking  ahead,  and  in  being  prepared  for  all 
kinds  of  sicknesses  and  all  sorts  of  operations.  Think  of 
having  an  operating  room  under  one's  roof,  and  hoping  to  live 
happily  all  the  days  of  one's  life!  Would  not  a  little  private 
sanitary  cemetery  within  the  conservator}'  of  that  home  be 
quite  an  addition  ?  Think  of  the  pleasure,  upon  visiting  that 
home,  to  be  taken  into  the  conservatory,  and  to  have  the  grave 
of  an  old  bachelor-uncle  pointed  out  here,  or  of  a  maiden- 
aunt  there,  or  of  a  pet  dog  or  canary  bird  yonder! 

In  giving  you,  on  the  one  side,  a  picture  of  Mrs.  Wiggs, 
and  in  citing  on  the  other  side,  the  case  of  the  man  complain- 
ing of  having  built  his  stairway  too  narrow  for 

Optimism  sses 

a  coffin,  and  the  case  or  the  woman  ornamenting  bright  sides  in 
her  new  home  with  a  private   pharmacy  and  a   everything    and 

everybody. 

private  operating-room,  I  have  given  you,  at  the 
same  time,  a  picture  of  optimism  and  pessimism.  One  sees 
the  bright  side,  even  of  the  darkest;  the  other  the  dark  side, 
even  of  the  brighest.  In  Mrs.  Wiggs,  we  have  one  of  those 
characters'  who  bring  sunshine  into  their  own  lives  and  into 
the  lives  of  others,  by  holding  fast  to  the  belief  that  this  is 
the  be.st  possible  world  and  that  over  it  rules  the  best  possi- 
ble God;  that  trials  and  tribulations  subserve  a  higher  purpose 
than  man  can  fathom;  that  even  the  worst  happenings  are  in- 
struments for  good,  if  interpreted  and  accepted  aright;  that 
there  is  no  cloud,  and  be  it  never  so  dark,  but  that  its  other 


34 

side  is  sun-illumined,  and  no  sunset,  and  be  it  never  so  gloomy, 
but  that  there  is  somewhere  a  roseate  sunrise;  that  there  is  no 
character,  and  be  it  never  so  bad,  but  that  there  is  a  good 
trait  somewhere, — in  short,  one  of  those  who  believes  that 

"In  the  mud  and  scum  of  things 
Something  always,  always  sings." 

But  you  might  say,  that  the  contrast  I  draw  between 
optimistic  Mrs.  Wiggs,  on  the  one  side,  and  the  pessimistic 
man  and  woman,  on  the  other  side,  is  unfair,  inasmuch  as 
these  are  taken  from  life,  while  the  other  is  a  product  of  fancy. 
You  might  say,  that  characters  like  Mrs.  Wiggs  exist  only  in 
fiction,  that  they  are  impossible  in  a  world  such  as  ours,  where 
sorrows  and  sufferings,  wrongs  and  wants,  make  it  difficult  to 
believe  that  all  things  are  for  the  best  and  that  there  is  good 
in  everything. 

As  to  the  first  objection,  let  me  say  that  there  was  never 
a  character  drawn  so  true  to  life  as  that  of  Mrs.  Wiggs.  I 
Mrs  wiq  s' optim-  have —en  her  often,  and  have  often  felt  the  warm 
ism  drawn  from  clasp  of  her  hand,  and  my  heart  has  often  been 
thrilled  by  the  sunshine  of  her  disposition.  I 
have  heard  her  sing,  even  though  sorrows  tried  their  best  to 
choke  her  voice;  and  I  have  seen  her  smile,  at  times,  when 
even  sympathizing  friends  could  not  restrain  their  tears.  I 
have  seen  her  faith  unshaken  though  others  disbelieved  or 
doubted.  I  have  seen  her  give  to  others  when  she  had  not 
enough  for  herself,  and  have  heard  her,  when  remonstrated 
with,  reply  that  God,  who  had  provided  for  her  in  the  past, 
would  also  provide  for  her  in  the  future.  I  have  heard  her 
"praise  God  from  whom  all  blessings  flow,"  when  about  all 
the  blessings  she  could  call  her  own  was  a  nature  overflowing 
with  faith,  hope  and  cheer. 

As  to  the  second  objection,  that  of  the  unreasonableness  of 

being  asked  to  lojlc   only  for  bright   sides  in  a  world    full  of 

darkness,  and  to  find  only  good  in  a  world  full  of 

There  is  an  op'.im-          -i     i    ,  ,•>  1  i       *.i  • 

ism  that  is  evil          evl*'   *et  me  sa^'  tnat  n°  Olle  as'cs   ^'OU  to   c*°   this. 
You  would  be  doing  wrong,  if  you  did.     There 

is  a  form  of  optimism  that  is  as  pernicious  as  the  worst  species 
of  pessimism.  There  is  an  optimism  that  paralyzes  all  growth 
and  all  endeavor;  that  makes  idlers  and  cowards  of  men;  that 


35 

leaves  the  righting  of  wrongs  to  chance  or  to  Providence, 
when  it  should  be  rooted  out  by  personal,  heroic  effort;  that 
tolerates  the  false  or  the  corrupt  or  the  absurd  rather  than,  by 
exposure  or  agitation  or  attack,  ruffle  people's  mind,  or  dis- 
turb people's  faith,  or  bring  persecution  or  ruin  upon  oneself. 
What,  if  Moses  or  Luther,  Washington  or  Lincoln,  Darwin  or 
Wise  had  contented  themselves  with  being  satisfied  with  exist- 
ing things,  with  leaving  well  enough  alone? 

There  are  times  when  a  healthy  pessimism  is  not  only 
laudable  but  also  imperative.  When  truth  has  to  be  spoken 
where  falsehood  works  evil,  when  justice  is  to 
be  done  where  injustice  flourishes,  when  virtue  ism 
is  to  be  defended  where  vice  is  triumphant,  when 
liberty  is  to  be  championed  where  tyranny  rules,  it  is  worse 
than  cowardice,  it  is  crime,  to  condone  or  perpetuate  the 
wrong  by  mouthing  some  such  phrases  as  "whatever  is,  is 
right,"  "all  is  for  the  best,"  "better  to  endure  the  wrong 
than  to  suffer  for  the  right." 

The  true  optimism  has  little  in  common  with  the  kind  we 
have  just  depicted.  True  optimism  is  of  the  heroic  sort,  of 
the  kind  of  which  Mrs.  Wiggs  is  a  type.  It  has 
the  courage  not  to  fume  at  the  unalterable,  nor  to  JgUr'|C°ptimism  is 
fret  where  fretting  is  of  no  avail.  It  has  the 
courage  to  be  grateful  even  for  little,  and  to  look  cheerfully 
forward  to  the  dawn,  even  in  the  darkest  night.  If  the  clouds 
are  dark,  and  their  color  beyond  its  power  of  changing,  it 
looks  for  a  silver  lining  or  a  golden  strand  somewhere,  and 
generally  finds  it.  If  the  storms  howl  and  defeat  its  every 
attempt  at  silencing  them,  it  tries  to  drown  them  under  the 
voice  of  song,  and  generally  succeeds.  If  the  heart  is  be- 
reaved of  love,  it  seeks  to  fill  the  void  with  other  loves.  If  it 
discovers  flaws  which  it  cannot  remedy,  it  looks  all  the  harder 
for  virtues,  or  labors  all  the  stronger  on  cultivating  them.  If 
cruelly  deceived  by  man,  it  clings  all  the  stronger  to  its  faith 
in  the  goodness  of  mankind.  If  baffled  by  adverse  fates,  it 
trusts  all  the  firmer  in  the  wisdom  and  dispensations  of  Provi- 
dence. 

And  such  optimism  can   easily   be  cultivated,  and  w7ell 
merits  cultivation,  for  nothing  yields  to  life  so  bountiful  a 


36 

True  optimism  de-  harvest  of  good  as  the  faculty  of  seeing  the 
serving  of  cuitiva-  bright  side  of  things,  of  believing  the  good  things 
of  people,  and  of  making  the  best  of  the  worst. 
Show  me  the  true  optimist,  and  I'll  show  you  one  of  the  hap- 
piest of  men.  Show  me  the  true  optimist,  and  I'll  show  you 
one  who  loves  all  that  is  loveable,  and  who  is  loved  by  all  whose 
love  is  worth  having,  in  whose  company  there  is  cheer  and 
joy,  who  is  sought  out  by  the  cheerful  and  joyful,  who 
with  little  means  puts  more  into  life  and  gets  more  out  of  it 
than  many  another  with  colossal  fortunes  and  far-reaching 
fame.  Show  me  the  true  optimist,  and  I  will  show  }TOU  the 
man  whose  heart  is  full  of  song,  whose  tongue  is  full  of  hu- 
man kindness,  whose  eye  not  even  the  direst  misery  can  blind 
to  the  goodness  and  beauty  of  things. 

What  man  saw  more  of  the  mud  and  scum  of  things  than 
Gorky,  and  what  man  saw  more  of  the  beauty  and  goodness 

beneath   it  than  he  ?     Listen  to   his  own  state- 
Gorky   sees   good  t     ..j  f  j         d  f  j  n 
among  lowest. 

of  life,  where  darkness  and  terror  reign,  where 
man  is  half  beast,  and  life  is  only  a  fight  for  bread.  It  flows 
sluggishly  there  in  dark  streams,  but  even  there,  gleam  pearls 
of  courage,  of  intelligence,  of  heroism.  liven  there,  beauty 
and  love  exist.  Wherever  man  is  found  there,  too,  good  is 
found, — in  tiny  particles  and  in  invisible  roots,  at  times,  but 
still  it  is  there.  All  these  roots  will  not  perish;  some  will 
grow  and  flourish  and  will  put  forth  fruits  of  life  and  love." 

And  what  man  tried  harder  to  cure  Emerson  of  his  per- 
sistent optimism  than   Carlyle,  and  what   man  made   a   more 

dismal  failure  of  it?  The  one  looked  at  the 
Emerson seesgood  w  throngh  smoked  glasses,  and  saw  nothing 

everywhere. 

in  it  that  was  bright;  the  other's  eyes  were  bright, 
and  his  glasses  clear  and  clean,  and  lie  saw  a  world  full  of 
beauty.  Where  the  one  could  not  admit  the  sunshine,  the 
other  could  not  "leave  the  clear  sky  out  of  the  landscape." 
The  Scotch  philosopher  resolved  one  day  to  cure  his  American 
friend  of  his  optimism.  "I  took  him,"  writes  Carlyle,  "to 
the  lowest  parts  of  London,  and  showed  him  all  that  was  go- 
ing on  there.  This  done,  1  turned  to  him.  saying:  'And  noo, 
man,  d'ye  believe  in  the  deevil  noo?'  'Oh,  no,'  he  replied; 


37 

'  all  these  people  seem  to  me  only  parts  of  the  great  machine, 
and,  on  the  whole,  I  think  they  are  doing  their  work  very  sat- 
isfactorily!' Then,  continues  Carlyle,  I  took  him  down  to 
the  House  of  Commons,  there  I  showed  him  ae  chiel  getting 
up  after  anither  and  leeing  and  leeing.  And  I  turned  to  him 
and  said:  'And  noo,  man,  d'ye  believe  in  the  deevil  noo  ?' 
He  made  me,  however,  just  the  same  answer  as  before,  and  I 
then  gave  him  up  in  despair." 

Men,  such  as  Emerson  and  Carlyle,  often  bring  their  re- 
spective temperaments  with  them  into  life,  and  the  one  proba- 
bly deserves  as  little  our  praise  as  the  other  de-  Some  born  with 
serves  our  censure.  There  are  people  who  bring  optimistic  temper- 
their  rose-colored  spectacles  with  them;  their 
merit  lies  in  keeping  them  clear  of  dust.  A  little  grandchild, 
one  day,  entered  the  room  of  her  grandmother,  who  had  been 
buried  a  few  clays  before.  Noticing  "granny's"  spectacles, 
she  said:  "Why,  granny  has  left  her  glasses  behind,  and  she 
will  not  be  able  to  see  the  pretty  things  of  heaven."  There 
are  people  who  have  left  behind  their  spectacles  upon  coining 
here,  and  they  cannot  see  half  or  any  of  the  pretty  things  of 
this  earth. 

But,  it  is  with  optimism  as  it  is  with  greatness,  —  as  "  some 
are  born  great,"  and  as  "others  achieve  greatness,"  so  are 
some  born  optimistic,  and  others  acquire  the 


habit  of  seeing  the   bright  side  of    things.     Of  ™  b 


the  many  pretty  sights  I  saw  in  Hamburg,  not 
the  least  was  an  old  tub,  crowded  with  growing  plants,  fas- 
tened by  means  of  an  iron  hoop  to  a  third  or  fourth  story 
window  of  an  old,  tumble-down  house  near  the  harbor.  It 
was  more  than  flowers  that  I  saw  at  that  window.  I  saw  a 
piece  of  optimism  there,  and  I  felt  quite  sure  that  bright  and 
fragrant  flowers  were  growing  in  hearts  and  minds  back  of 
that  attic  window.  Another  instance  of  people  cultivating 
the  art  of  looking  for  bright  things  in  life  was  presented  to 
Doctor  Con  well  and  myself,  on  our  visit  to  Copenhagen,  where 
we  noticed  quite  a  number  of  the  window  panes  of  the  poorer 
homes  painted  with  flowers.  The  poor  in  that  cold,  northern 
climate  probably  find  it  difficult  to  keep  flowers  alive  in  winter. 
Yet,  they  will  not  be  deprived  of  the  sight  of  the  beautiful. 


38 

They  will  have  the  light  filter  into  their  rooms,  colored  with 
the  green  and  red  and  golden,  and  so  they  make  art  do  what 
nature  denies. 

There  are  many  ways  of  cultivating  the  habit  of  seeing 
the  bright  side  of  things,  and  of  making  the  best  of  the  worst. 
Health  a  means  of  The  first  and  foremost  among  these  is  the  pro- 
developing  opJm-  motion  of  good  health.  Sickness  and  optimism 
rarely  go  together.  Where  you  find  disease  there 
you  generally  find  the  pessimist.  It  is  natural  for  the  mind, 
affected  by  suffering,  or  overworked,  to  be  morbid,  to  imagine 
and  fear  the  worst.  Where  there  is  a  healthy  flow  of  blood, 
where  lungs  are  filled  with  pure  air,  where  there  is  plentiful 
exercise,  where  there  is  neither  exhaustion  nor  dissipation, 
where  the  digestion  is  good,  where  mental  and  physical  labor 
wisely  alternates  with  rest,  where  the  weekly  Sabbath  is 
sacredly  devoted  to  physical  and  mental  and  spiritual  recrea- 
tion, there  you  will  generally  find  the  cheerful  temperament, 
the  disposition  to  look  at  the  world  through  rose-colored 
spectacles. 

What  if  we  were,  the  first  thing  in  the  morning,  to  step 
before  a  looking-glass,  and  looking  squarely  at  the  fellow 
therein,  ask  him  "  How  do  3*011  feel  this  morning,  and  how 
are  you  going  to  feel  this  evening  ?  In  what  spirit  did  you 
rise  this  morning,  and  what  will  be  your  mood  to-day  ?  Have 
you  put  on  your  smoked  or  your  rose-colored  glasses,  and,  if  the 
latter,  have  you  thoroughly  cleaned  them  of  all  dust?"  And 
if  he  makes  a  cross  and  crabid  face,  and  has  a  tired  look,  and 
has  worry  sitting  on  his  brow,  he  is  ready  for  a  bad  case  of 
pessimism,  and  you  must  prescribe  for  him  at  once.  Tell  him, 
he  must  worry  less,  for  worry  kills  the  joy  of  life.  Tell  him 
to  slave  less,  for,  even  though  its  profit  be  fortunes,  there  is 
no  happiness  in  the  fortunes  of  slavery.  Tell  him  to  take 
time  for  his  meals,  and  for  walking  to  and  from  his  home,  for, 
whatever  time  he  steals  of  his  meals  and  exercise,  he  will  have 
to  repay  tenfold  in  the  amount  of  time  he  will  ultimately  lose 
by  sickness.  Tell  him  to  smile  more,  to  sing  more,  to  open 
his  eyes  and  ears  more  to  the  beauties  about  him,  to  think 
kindlier  of  his  fellowmen  and  of  his  fate.  Tell  him  to  take 
that  prescription  once  every  morning,  thirty  days  in  the  month, 


39 

and  twelve  months  in  the  year,  and  he  will  develop  into  as  fine 
a  specimen  of  optimist  as  ever  you  saw  in  all  your  life. 

Industry  is  another  means  of  developing  optimism.  There 
are  a  lot  of  people  in  this  world  who  see  no  good  because  they 
do  no  good.  They  spend  their  days  in  idleness.  Werk  another 
Their  lives  have  neither  aim  nor  purpose.  Their  means  of  deveiop- 
appetites  are  sated  and  cloyed.  They  have  had  N  optimism, 
nearly  everything,  therefore  are  they  satisfied  with  nothing. 
Women,  especially  society  women,  constitute  a  large  part  of 
that  class,  and  their  pessimism  is  responsible  for  no  end  of  ills. 
Such  women  need  nothing  so  much  as  work,  healthy  work, 
work  that  shall  keep  hand  and  heart  and  head  nobly  busy. 
Try  the  work-cure  treatment  on  such  diseased  members  of 
society,  and  they  will  have  no  need  of  rest-cures.  Put  a 
scrubbing-brush  into  their  hand,  place  them  in  front  of  the 
wash-tub  and  the  kitchen-range  and  the  cradle,  and  you  will 
effect  more  cures  than  do  your  high-priced  specialists  in  your 
high-priced  private  hospitals,  and  you  will  introduce  into  homes 
more  cheer  and  happiness  and  good  will  to  the  square  inch  than 
can  now  be  found  to  the  square  acre. 

Another    means  of   developing  optimism   is    fostering    a 
spirit  of  wise  contentment.     This  is  the  special  need  of  those 

"  have   nots"    who    are    always   envious    of    the 

Contentment 
haves.         Ihese  need  to  learn,  more  than  any-   another  means  of 

thing  else,  that   "having"   and   "enjoying"  are   developing  optim- 
ism, 
not  interchangeable  terms,  that  as      uneasy  rests 

the  head  that  wears  the  crown,"  so  uneasy  walks  and  rests 
the  body  that  is  laden  with  fortune  or  with  fame.  It  was 
Socrates  who  said  that,  whenever  he  sees  a  fine  display  in  a 
show-window,  it  pleases  him  to  note  how  many  things  there 
are  in  this  world  he  can  do  without.  We  need  some  of  that 
Socratic  spirit,  that  will  enable  us  to  see  that  the  having  much 
means  much  care  and  much  worriment,  of  all  of  which  those, 
who  have  little,  are  relieved.  There  is  an  old  Latin  adage 
that  is  well  worth  remembering:  "  Happy  is  not  he  who  has 
what  he  desires,  but  who  desires  not  what  he  has  not  "  I 
know  of  a  young  lady  who  is  fairly  bubbling  over  with  good 
nature.  Though  of  excellent  mind  and  heart,  and  though 
trained  to  provide  for  herself,  she  is  not  considered  eligible  to 


40 

so-called  society,  because  there  a  father's  financial  ranking 
generally  counts,  not  a  daughter's  excellence  of  mind  and  soul. 
And  yet,  she  is  not  in  the  least  envious  of  the  life  from  which 
she  is  shut  out.  She  rather  pities  those  who  must  dress  and 
feed  and  parade  and  entertain  and  be  entertained  as  com- 
manded. She  would  not  exchange  her  freedom  for  their 
slavery,  her  simple  and  natural  gaity  for  the  hypocrisies  of 
fashionable  society.  She  earns  her  living  in  one  of  the  noblest 
callings  in  life;  her  leisure  time  she  employs  partly  in  seeking 
pleasure,  partly  with  her  books  and  music,  parti}7  on  work  of 
benevolence.  Fortunate  that  man  who  obtains  the  hand  and 
heart  of  such  a  woman!  The  optimism  of  her  maidenhood 
will  be  the  charm  of  her  wifehood,  and  the  glory  of  her 
motherhood.  Where  her  cheery  spirit  will  hold  sway,  there 
will  be  an  empire  of  happiness. 

Yet  another  means  there  is  for  developing  optimism,  and 

that  is  cultivating   a  due  sense   of  appreciation   of  past   and 

present  blessings.     In  one  of  my  former  homes, 

Apprecia'ion 

another  means  of  there  lived  a  little  woman,  who  enjoyed  quite  a 
developing  opiim-  ]oca]  reputation  for  having  remarked  one  day, 
that  she  had  no  time  to  pray  for  things  she  had 
not,  she  was  kept  so  busy  thanking  God  for  what  she  has  and 
for  what  she  has  had.  What  floods  of  optimism  would  wash 
this  world  clean  of  pessimism,  if  it  had  this  old  woman's 
spirit  of  thankfulness!  Straining  our  eye:  for  envious  glimpses 
of  what  we  have  not,  we  are  blind  to  the  countless  blessings 
that  are  ours.  We  have  eyes  to  see  the  glories  of  God.  We 
have  ears  to  hear  the  voices  of  those  who  love  us.  We  have 
tongues  to  speak  kindly  words  to  those  in  need  of  words  of 
comfort.  We  have  brains  to  think,  hearts  to  feel,  souls  to 
aspire.  The  sun  shines  for  us;  the  rain  falls  for  us;  the  har- 
vest ripens  for  us;  the  flower  blooms  for  us;  the  bird  sings  for 
us;  for  us  sunrise  and  sunset  and  rainbows  deck  themselves  in 
their  most  glorious  raiment.  How  much  more  thankful  than 
we  that  patient  was,  who  folded  his  hands  one  day,  and  said 
"  How  good  the  I/orcl  is  to  let  the  sun  shine  through  my  win- 
dows!" Or  that  poor  little  boy,  who  sleeping  in  an  attic  room, 
one  winter  night,  with  but  a  board  for  his  cover,  turned  to  his 


mother,  and  asked:  "  What  do  poor  boys  do  in  such  a  night 
as  this,  who  have  no  boards  with  which  to  cover  themselves  ?" 
And  of  one  more  means  for  developing  a  habit  of  seeing 
the  bright  side  of  things  I  must  speak,  and  that  is  the  culiva- 
tion  of  a  spirit  of  trust  in  the  wisdom  of  God's  Fajth  another 
dispensation.  Supported  by  the  staff  of  faith,  means  of  develop- 
many  a  pilgrim  has  crossed  in  safety  the  abyss  lnfl  °Ptimisrn- 
of  pessimism  and  despair.  They  who  look  up,  while  the  tears 
are  trickling  down,  transplant  a  piece  of  heaven  into  their 
hearts.  They,  who  resignedly  bow  their  heads  under  the  bur- 
den of  their  trials,  as  flowers  bend  their  head  under  the  storm, 
shall  in  the  returning  sunshine,  here  or  yonder,  look  all  the 
brighter  and  fresher  for  their  purification.  They  who  in  the 
darkest  night  look  trustfully  forward  to  the  coming  dawn, 
lessen  the  sorrows  of  the  present,  and,  in  the  present,  have  a 
foretaste  of  the  joys  that  are  to  come. 


Jams  0f 

V— REALISM. 


A  SUNDAY  DISCOURSE 

BBFOKE    THE 

REFORM  CONGREGATION  KENESETH  ISRAEL, 

Br 

RABBI  JOSEPH  KRAUSKOPF.  D.  D. 

Philadelphia,  March  soth,  igoi. 


Text :  "  Who  may  ascend  unto  the  hill  of  the  Lord,  and  who  may  stand  in  His 
holy  place?  He  that  is  clean  of  hands,  and  pure  in  heart  ;  that  lifteth  not  up  his  soul 
unto  falsehood."  PSALM  xxiv,  3-4. 

SCRIPTURAL  LESSON  :  ISAIAH  LV. 


Upon  being  told  that  this  Sunday's  discourse,  in  our  pres- 
ent series  of  "Some  Isms  of  To-Day, "  would  be  entitled 
Realism,  a  friend  of  mine  remarked,  "  I  want  to  Oidm«anin  of  re- 
hear that  discourse,  for  I  am  a  Realist."  "  No,"  aiist:  a  practical 
I  said,  "you  are  not,"  and  I  knew  whereof  I  man> 
spoke.  I  know  him  to  be  a  man  to  whom  life  means  more 
than  merely  toiling  and  moiling  for  gold,  than  eating  or  drink- 
ing or  worrying  or  racing  for  a  number  of  years,  to  perish  in 
the  end  as  perishes  the  beast.  I  know  him  to  be  a  man  of 
deep  affections,  of  generous  impulses,  of  religious  inclinations, 
a  man  capable  of  self-sacrifice,  a  believer  in  the  true  and  the 
good  and  the  beautiful,  and  a  promoter  of  the  same.  To  him, 
the  realist  is  the  practical  man;  the  man  whose  feet  are  upon 
the  ground,  whose  eyes  are  directed  to  the  object  in  front  of 
him  and  not  to  the  clouds,  who  generally  achieves  something 
because  he  labors  for  it,  and  does  not  dream  of  it. 

The  only  difference  between  us  is,  probably,  one  of  defini- 
tion.    His  conception  of  realism  is  the  German  understanding 

of  the  word,  in  which  language  it  has  conveved, 

...  Modern  realism: 

till  recent  times,  the  meaning  or  the  practical  in   vitiated  taste,  sor- 

edncation  and  in  life.    He  probably  does  not  know   *d  aim>  m°"«y 

greed, 
of  the  men  who,  in   these  days,  call  themselves 

realists,  naturalists,  who  have  invaded  literature,   drama,  art, 


44 

politics,  religion  and  morality;  the  writers  and  artists,  who 
boast  that  they  exhibit  the  literal  reality,  the  unvarnished 
truth  of  things,  and  who  represent  the  most  revolting  charac- 
ters, scenes  and  events,  idealizing,  beautifying  nothing,  con- 
cealing not  even  what  is  most  offensive  to  good  taste  and  good 
morals,  teaching  that  beauty  must  be  sacrificed  to  truth,  the 
ideal  to  the  real,  the  poetic  to  the  prosaic.  My  friend  has 
probably  no  acquaintance  with  the  men  who,  styling  them- 
selves realists,  teach  that  the  spider  and  the  toad,  the  weed 
and  the  thorn,  have  a  larger  place  on  earth  than  the  canary  or 
the  swan,  than  the  rose  or  the  violet,  and  are  therefore  en- 
titled to  larger  consideration;  that  the  earth  is  fuller  of  the 
depraved,  the  vicious,  the  criminal,  than  of  heroes  and  saints, 
and  the  truth  is  better  served  by  presenting  these,  in  all  their 
hideousness,  nudity,  obscenity,  viciousness,  than  picturing  the 
others  with  their  halos  and  laurels.  He  has  probably  not 
heard  of  the  men  who,  by  their  lives  and  writings,  teach  that 
"  natural  right  "  is  higher  than  "  legal  right,"  "natural  love  " 
preferable  to  ' '  artificial  love, ' '  that  life  is  a  bubble,  puffed  out  of 
nothing  and  bursting  into  nothing,  that  there  is  nothing  back 
of  the  cradle  and  nothing  in  front  of  the  coffin,  that  he  acts 
wisest  who  gets  most  of  the  only  realities  that  are  worth  hav- 
ing in  life:  gold  and  all  the  pleasure  that  gold  will  buy. 

Nothing  can  be  clearer,  therefore,  than  that  my  friend  is 
as  little  in  harmony  with  this  conception  of  realism  as  I  am 

opposed  to  his  understanding  of  the  term  realist. 
t!Cwea!°h    I  believe  as  much  as  he  in  the  practical  man,  in 

the  man  who  achieves  by  reason  of  conscientious 
and  persevering  labor.  I  do  not  belong  to  that  class,  if  that 
class  really  exists,  that  shudders  at  the  thought  of  wealth,  as 
if  it  were  something  wicked,  something  to  be  shunned.  Money 
may  be  made  to  serve  the  highest  ends,  and  he  who  spurns  it 
or  neglects  it  thwarts  his  own  best  good.  As  an  end  in  itself, 
none)-  is  nothing,  as  a  means  it  may  be  everything.  It  may 
mean  education,  health,  wholesome  food,  respectable  environ- 
ment, skilled  medical  service,  comfort,  travel,  cultivation  of 
science,  music,  art  and  literature.  It  may  mean  independence, 
benevolence,  freedom  from  financial  worry,  a  peaceful  old  age, 
Money  is  the  lever  that  lifts  humanity  out  of  barbarism,  and 


45 

the  propeller  that  moves  civilization  forward  and  upward. 
Banish  money,  and  the  healthful  desire  and  the  noble  use  of  it, 
and  the  retrogression  of  society  will  commence.  Banish  the 
money-makers,  and  you  banish  at  the  same  time  your  inven- 
tors and  educators,  your  artists  and  benefactors. 

There  is  nothing  against  which  I  would  warn  a  youth  as 
much  as  against  poverty.  As  many  men  are  ruined  by  the 
lack  of  money  as  by  the  love  of  it.  Poverty  is  a 

,         .    ,  .  .  .  Poverty  a  hardship. 

hardship;  want  is  a  cruel  taskmaster.  It  cripples 
powers;  it  stifles  talents.  For  every  one  that  triumphs  over  it, 
a  hundred  succumb.  It  contracts  the  meaning  of  life,  con- 
demns it  to  a  constant  grind  and  ceaseless  toil,  to  habitation 
among  filth,  to  association  with  the  unclean,  the  uncultured, 
the  unmoral.  It  poisons  the  happiness  of  childhood,  saps  the 
strength  of  manhood,  opens  the  almshouse  or  infirmary  in  old 
age,  and  relinquishes  its  hold  on  its  victim  only  in  the  potter's 
field. 

All  this  and  much  more  may  be  said  in  favor  of  wealth  and 
against  poverty.     But  there  is  a  love  of  wealth  that  is  to  be 
eschewed  even  more  than  the  severest  poverty. 
Unfortunately,  realism  has  invaded  the  realm  of  Obiection J°  mere 

money-getting. 

legitimate  wealth-acquisition,  and  has,  in  thou- 
sands of  cases,  made  it  the  sole  end  of  existence,  the  on  I}7  reality 
worth  striving  for,  the  only  purpose  for  which  God  has  created 
the  heavens  and  the  earth,  and  for  which  he  has  endowed  man 
with  his  marvellous  faculties.  In  a  thousand  cases,  realism 
closes  the  eye  to  every  beauty,  save  the  yellow  of  gold;  and 
the  ear  to  every  sound,  save  the  jingle  of  coin;  and  the  heart 
to  every  interest,  save  money-getting.  All  the  poetry  and 
idealism  and  higher  aspirations  of  life  are  shut  out  to  its  devo- 
tees. No  birds  sing  for  them.  No  flowers  bloom  for  them. 
For  them  the  sky  is  never  blue  nor  the  landscapes  ever  golden. 
For  them  the  poet,  the  musician,  the  artist,  has  no  existence. 
Religion  has  no  meaning  to  them;  their  God  is  locked  within 
their  safes.  No  suffering  of  the  sick  and  poor  moves  them; 
no  appeal  for  the  betterment  of  their  fellowmen  wakens  their 
response.  Commandments  are  broken;  laws  are  circumvented; 
goods  are  misrepresented;  accounts  are  falsified;  advantage  is 
taken  of  the  helpless;  injustice  is  done.  Every  move  in  life 


46 

is  weighed  and  measured  and  calculated  by  the  standard  of 
wealth.  Companions  are  chosen  for  their  purse  riches,  not  for 
their  riches  of  heart  and  mind.  Men  stand  eminent  in  finan- 
cial circles  and  are  courted  by  fashionable  society,  who  are 
uncouth,  vulgar,  illiterate  and  characterless,  and  who  would 
be  dropped  as  a  red  hot  coal  is  dropped  a  day  after  the  loss  of 
their  fortune.  Worth  is  estimated  by  bank  account,  not  by 
character.  Careers  are  chosen  for  sons  with  a  view  of  mak- 
ing money-getters  of  them,  even  though  nature  have  fitted 
them  for  some  other  callings  fully  as  noble  and  amply  renu- 
merative  for  all  the  necessities  of  life. 

Oh,  the  misfits  which  one  encounters  daily  among  the  sons 
of  the  rich!  Oh,  the  thousands  that  are  annually  sacrificed  to 
Mammon,  because  of  parents'  belief  that  only  a 
mtsfitTof  sons'58  money-making  career  is  practical  and  profitable, 
that  all  other  careers  point  toward  the  poor- 
house!  Thousands  are  languishing  behind  counters,  to-day, 
or  are  stooping  over  ledgers  and  day-books,  who  ought  to  have 
been  working  at  j-ome  trade,  as  they  might  have  done,  had 
fate  "blessed  them  with  parents  more  concerned  about  their 
sons'  natural  fitness  than  in  their  own  money-greed.  There 
was  a  prominent  eye  specialist  in  Cincinnati,  who,  when  a  lad, 
had  to  obtain  I>r.  Wise's  intercession  with  his  father,  before 
he  was  permitted  to  exchange  the  clothing  store  for  a  college. 
His  father's  strenuous  argument  was  "  there  is  more  money  in 
clothing  than  in  the  professions."  I  know  of  a  brilliant  young 
man,  who  is  regarded,  by  his  family,  a  dreamer  and  by  others, 
a  failure,  because  he  has  chosen  to  enrich  mankind  by  the 
wealth  of  his  mind  rather  than  enrich  himself.  I  know  of  one 
who  is  to-day  at  the  head  of  a  conservatory  of  music,  whose 
father  tried  his  best  to  make  a  failure  of  him  as  a  travelling 
salesman;  and  of  another,  I  know,  who  is  to-day  eking  out  an 
existence  as  a  misfit  salesman,  whose  father,  in  my  presence, 
threatened  to  break  the  violin  over  his  head,  if  he  would  once 
more  speak  of  making  music  his  profession.  Telling  some 
gentlemen,  the  other  day,  that  a  son  of  a  wealthy  merchant  is 
about  to  enter  the  National  Farm  School,  I  was  asked  in  aston- 
ishment, "Is  there  anything  wrong;,  with  the  boy  ?"  A  rich 
man's  son  studying  practical  and  scientific  agriculture,  for  the 


47 

purpose  of  later  carrying  on  agricultural  operations,  is  looked 
upon  as  something  so  absurd,  so  unprofitable  as  to  give  rise  to 
a  question  concerning  the  boy's  sanity  of  mind  or  body.  Had 
a  father  had  his  way,  Franklin  would  have  become  a  money- 
making  tallow-chandler,  never  one  of  the  makers  of  our 
Nation;  Tenn)'son,  L,owell,  Samuel  Johnson,  L,essing,  Gam- 
betta,  would  never  have  become  prides  of  their  respective 
nations. 

This  intense  realism,  this  looking  solely  to  the  financially 
practical  and  profitable,  counts  its  victims  among  daughters  as 

well  as  among  sons.     Matrimonial  alliances  are   „ 

Realism     forces 

considered  and  calculated,  in  far  too  many  homes,  daughters  into  un- 
almost  entirely  from  the  financial  point  of  view.  holy  alliances> 
The  rich  match  is  the  great  match.  Where  Croesus  woos, 
there  is  little  chance  for  Romeo.  The  eyes  that  are  so  keen 
to  the  latter 's  small  means  are  totally  blind  to  the  other's 
large  vices.  He  knows  the  art  of  money-making,  and  that 
covers  a  multitude  of  sins.  No  matter  what  his  past  life  has 
been,  or  what  his  present  health  or  present  habits  are,  so  long 
as  he  is  rich.  There  is  little  consideration  of  a  daughter's  ideals, 
culture,  refinement,  or  of  her  rightful  expectations  in  a  hus- 
band to  whom  she  is  to  give  her  virgin  heart  and  soul  and  all. 
If  he  has  little  or  no  character,  he  has  money,  and  has  the 
knack  of  making  more,  and  can  keep  a  wife  in  elegance.  That 
makes  marriage  legitimate  and  commendable.  Such  is  real- 
ism's view  of  marriage  in  all  its  hideous  plainness,  and  to  it  a 
realistic  society  says  Amen!  I  recently  read  a  touching  story, 
one  of  the  most  pathetic  I  have  read  for  some  time,  written  by 
Henryk  Sienkiewicz.  It  told  of  a  poor  student  who  had  been 
befriended  by  a  rich  family  and  by  them  enabled  to  finish  his 
university  studies.  Pie  proved  himself  worthy  of  their  kind- 
ness, graduated  with  highest  honors,  and  the  entire  faculty 
predicted  for  him  a  brilliant  future.  He  hastened  to  his  bene- 
factors to  inform  them  of  his  good  fortune,  in  gratitude  for 
all  they  had  done  for  him,  and  also  in  the  hope  that  his  richly 
promising  career  would  incline  them  to  look  favorably  upon 
the  attachment  that  had  sprung  up  in  his  heart  for  their 
daughter.  He  was  called  "  a  base  iugrate  "  for  having  dared 
to  lift  his  eye  to  their  daughter,  and  was  turned  out  of  doors. 


His  hard  study  prior  to  his  graduation,  and  the  severe  shock 
to  his  nerves  and  heart  at  the  treatment  of  his  benefactors, 
threw  him  upon  a  protracted  and  painful  sick-bed.  His  pro- 
fessors and  their  wives  vied  with  one  another  in  nursing  him. 
None  of  his  benefactor's  family  came  near  him.  In  his  de- 
lirium but  one  thought  was  uppermost:  it  was  all  a  mistake, 
his  benefactors  had  not  refused  him  their  daughter,  they  knew 
that  he  would  give  her  an  honorable  name  and  a  happy  future. 
He  recovered  only  to  learn  that  during  his  sickness  his  bene- 
factor's family  had  gone  to  Italy,  where  the  daughter  had 
married  a  titled  roue.  An  honorable  man  with  a  brilliant 
future  was  rejected  for  a  title — with  a  disreputable  man  at- 
tached to  it. 

A  heroic  battle  is  being  fought  in  one  of  our  homes,  this 
very  day.  It  is  a  fight  between  a  daughter's  idealism  and  a 
parent's  realism.  Who  will  win  ?  Or  will  the  price  of  the 
victory  be  a  broken  heart  ? 

It  is  in  much  of  modern  literature,  more   especially   in 

fiction,  where  realism  sows  the  seeds  that  ripen  such  perverted 

views  of  marriage  and  such  false  standards   of 

Holism  debases    Hf  h         •     ^  mentioned.     When  one  con- 

the  novel.  J 

siders  the  inestimable  power  for  good  the  novel 
has  exercised,  and  still  can  exercise  in  the  education  of  the 
people,  he  cannot  but  bewail  its  modern  decadence. 

Next  to  the  Bible  and  the  sermon,  the  novel  has  proba- 
bly done  more  than  any  other  agency  in  speaking  to  the  heart, 
.   in  informing  the  mind,  in  holding  up  a  mirror  to 

The    novel    turned  **      * 

from   a   power  for    the    SOlll.       WllO   of    US  Call  tell  llOW  much  of    OU1" 

characters  have  not  been  moulded  by  the  heroes 
of  the  creation  of  Dickens,  Scott,  Thackeray,  George  Kliot, 
Auerbach,  Victor  Hugo,  Howells,  James  Lane  Allen,  and  of 
other  writers  of  equal  worth  ?  Man}-  of  us  might  trace  our 
clearest  conception  of  right  and  duty  to  the  reading  of  some 
good  work  of  fiction.  Many  of  us  have  there  found  our 
straightest  way  to  God,  our  shortest  path  to  reformation. 
Never  have  parents  and  preachers  warned  against  the  seduc- 
tions of  sins  as  effectively  as  has  the  legitimate  novel.  Where 
the  pulpit  dare  not  speak,  where  parents  will  not  or  cannot 


49 

speak,  where  friends  feel  not  free  to  speak,  it  has  spoken,  often 
just  in  time,  and  often  with  blessed  results. 

But,  of  late,  there  has  come  a  change  over  the  spirit  of 
the  novel.  Desire  of  notoriety  or  of  gain,  eagerness  to  out- 
shine the  thousand-and-one  novelists  of  to-day, 

To  a  power  for  evil. 

has  driven  writers  to  paroxysms  of  sensational- 
ism and  vulgarity,  for  which  respectability  is  claimed  under 
the  name  of  realism  or  nahwalism.  From  a  healthful,  fertiliz- 
ing channel,  it  has  been  turned  into  a  noxious  sewer.  The 
sane  and  healthy  view  of  life  no  longer  attracts  the  writer, 
neither  is  it  made  attractive  for  the  reader.  It  is  too  puerile, 
too  ideal,  too  romantic.  The  realism  that  gives  a  distorted 
view  of  life  by  selecting  abnormal  types,  the  realism  that 
knows  no  shame,  no  blush,  that  flashes  its  lurid  searchlights 
into  the  most  secret  and  most  sacred  relationships,  that  strips 
every  veil  from  modesty,  and  batters  down  every  screen  in 
front  of  decenc)',  the  realism  that  dives  into  the  ce.sspools  filled 
with  the  effluvia  of  the  morgue,  of  the  divorce-court,  of  the 
den  or  dive  or  madhouse — this  constitutes  a  large  part  of  the 
fiction  that  is  sent  out,  under  great  blare  of  trumpet,  in  edi- 
tions of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  copies,  and  that  are  read 
by  people,  young  and  old,  who  regard  themselves  intellectu- 
ally superior  for  their  having  emancipated  themselves  from 
the  goody  goody  fiction  of  their  mothers  and  grandmothers. 

As  might  well   have  been  expected,  as  is   the  novel  so  the 
drama  is  sure  to  be.      Bach  is  an  expression  of  the  same  ten- 
dency of  the  age.     The  one  is  fiction  in  prose, 
the  other  fiction  in  action.     And  of  the  two,  the   R"'Xio  dllS.. 
realistic  drama  is  much  the  worse.      It  makes  up 
by  greater  intensity  for  what  it  suffers  by  condensation.   What- 
ever might  escape  the  eye  of  the  novel  reader,  the  forcefulness 
of  realistic  acting  stamps  vividly  and  lastingly  upon  the  mind 
of  the  spectator. 

Like  the  novel,  the  drama  is  being  perverted  from  one  of 
the  wholesomest  means  of  public  education  to  one  of  the  most 
corrupt.      Plays  that  at  one  time  sent  people  to 
their  homes  wiser  and  better  than  when  they  left. 
that    taught    far    more  forcibly   than    school    or 
church  that  virtue  is  its  own  reward,  that  sin  ultimately  meets 


50 

with  its  desert,  that  justice  rules  and  that  the  guilty  never 
go  unpunished,  have  been  driven  off  the  stage,  and  their 
place  taken  by  the  drama  of  realism,  that  guises  itself  under 
the  name  of  Problem  Play  without  ever  solving  the  problem, 
that  in  reality  seems  to  have  for  its  sole  object  the  drawing  of 
the  largest  audiences  by  the  unholiest  of  means.  In  these 
plays,  there  is  ever  a  rebellion  against  traditional  morality,  an 
overriding  of  scriptural  authority,  a  defiance  of  law  and  pub- 
lic opinion,  a  contempt  for  the  ordinary  restraints  and  tastes 
and  decencies.  L,et  me  give  you  a  specimen  of  its  repulsive- 
ness.  In  Gerhard  Hauptmann's  play  "Die  Weber"  (The 
Weavers)  we  have  presented  to  us  the  following  scene: 

A  poor  weaver,  who  has  not  touched  meat  for  two  years, 
asks  a  comrade — not  having  the  heart  to  do  it  himself — to  kill 
a  pretty  little  dog  which  had  run  up  to  him,  and  his  wife 
roasts  it  for  him.  He  cannot  control  his  craving,  and  begins 
dipping  into  the  saucepan  almost  before  the  meat  is  done.  His 
stomach,  however,  cannot  bear  the  dainty,  and  to  his  great 
despair  he  is  forced  to  reject  it. 

Woman  in  the  drama  is  forever  forsaking  her  natural 
place.  She  is  forever  stretching  forth  her  hand  after  forbid- 
den fruit,  the  eating  of  which  can  only  effect  her  fall  and  put 
a  blight  upon  civilized  society.  Man  is  forever  clamoring  for 
the  right  to  love  where  he  will,  and  not  where  he  should,  the 
right  to  spurn  the  holiest  of  ties  for  the  basest  of  reasons. 
Vice  is  fairly  flaunted  in  the  face  of  the  spectator  in  these 
plays,  and  every  dramatic  art  is  employed,  first,  to  overcome 
his  aversion  and  scruples,  then,  to  win  his  pity  and  sympath}', 
and,  finally,  his  approval.  The  courtesan  and  the  roue  are 
glorified.  The  death  head  of  sin  is  garlanded.  The  pollution 
of  ihe  dive  is  rose-watered.  The  mind  is  intoxicated  by 
emotional  and  sensational  acting.  The  demarcation  line  be- 
tween right  and  wrong  is  blurred.  Criminal  object  lessons 
are  given  how  virtue  may  be  trapped,  how  honesty  may  be 
tempted,  how  innocence  may  be  betrayed,  how  law  and  justice 
may  be  foiled. 

Yet  another  territory  of  popular  education  realism  has  in- 
vaded. The  press  is  going  the  way  of  the  novel  and  the 


drama,  and  its  conquest  is  a  harder  blow  to  civil- 
ization than  that  of  the  other  two,  for,  while  we 
could  do  without  the  novel  and  drama,  we  can- 
not well  do  without  the  press.  Our  interests  in  our  fellow- 
kind  have  deepened  and  widened.  We  must  know  of  the 
doings  of  one  another.  We  must  have  a  public  tribunal  for 
righting  our  wrongs,  for  correcting  our  errors,  for  disseminat- 
ing our  views,  for  exchanging  our  opinions,  for  advocating 
our  principles,  for  championing  our  rights. 

A  free  and  a  legitimate  press  wields  a  power  for  good  such 
as  not  all  the  universities,  courts  and  churches  in  the  land 
have  exercised.  The  twenty-six  letters  of  the 
alphabet  have,  in  the  press,  spelled  half  of  our 
modern  blessings  into  existence.  A  legitimate 
newspaper  is  our  public  arena,  our  safety  valve,  our  public 
conscience.  The  fear  of  exposure  at  the  public  pillory  of  the 
press,  of  being  stared  at  by  tens  of  thousands  of  eyes  through 
the  columns  of  the  newspaper,  keeps  countless  multitudes  on 
the  path  of  rectitude.  The  black  ink  of  the  newspaper  has 
probably  washed  more  souls  clean  than  has  all  the  holy  water 
of  all  the  churches. 

But  the  black  ink  of  the  newspaper  is  turning  yellow,  and 
this  yellow  ink  is  soiling  more  characters  than  any  other  cor- 
rupting agency  of  which  I  have  knowledge. 

Perverted  into  evil. 

Wherever  the  yellow  journal  has  acquired  gigan- 
tic power,  it  uses  it  with  all  the  brutality  of  the  giant.  To  ap- 
pease its  thirst  for  ever  greater  power,  for  ever  vaster  circula- 
tion, for  ever  larger  gain,  it  prints  most  what  is  most  unfit 
to  print,  and  when  fact  and  truth  are  wanting,  the  deficiency  is 
readily  supplied  by  fabrication.  It  caters  to  the  lowest  appe- 
tites. It  revels  in  blackmail  and  exposure.  It  glories  in  head- 
lines the  loudness  of  which  almost  make  the  blind  to  see  and 
the  deaf  to  hear.  It  dishes  up  the  most  sensational  morsels. 
It  invades  the  most  private  sanctuaries,  and  drags  into  the 
public  glare  the  holiest  secrets.  It  blackens  the  whitest  char- 
acters, and  whitens  the  blackest.  Its  pen  is  ever  ready  for  the 
assassin's  thrust;  its  columns  ever  open  to  the  scandal-monger, 
to  the  stock-manipulator,  to  the  lobbyist,  to  the  political  boss. 


52 

Speaking  of  political  bosses,  where  has  realism  committed 
greater  ravages  than  in  the  politics  of  the  present  day  ?  Where 
is  the  hand  wider  open  than  in  politics,  bartering 
away  Principles,  conviction,  liberty,  right,  jus- 
tice, an3*thing,  so  long  as  it  gratifies  the  thirst 
for  power  or  gain.  Unlike  Pharaoh's  seven  lean  cows,  poli- 
ticians enter  upon  their  office  very  lean,  and  leave  it  very  fat. 
Far  from  following  the  doctrine  of  Pericles,  that  it  is  better 
that  the  individual  suffer  than  that  the  State  should  lose,  they 
believe  in  their  own  gain,  no  matter  if  it  be  at  the  loss  of  the 
State.  What  wonder  that  politics  should  have  acquired  the 
meaning  of  "a  powerfully  organized  system  of  thievery!" 
What  wonder  that  enormous  sums  of  money  should  be  levied 
on  office-holders  or  office-seekers,  on  contractors,  or  on  others, 
who  have  profitable  franchises  or  favors  to  retain  or  to  secure! 
What  wonder  that  politics  should  be  in  the  clutches  of  the 
"Boss,"  the  man  who,  as  Mr.  Bryce  described  him,  "has 
grown  up  in  an  atmosphere  of  oaths  and  cocktails,  whose 
ideas  of  honor  and  purity  are  as  strange  to  him  as  ideas  about 
the  nature  of  the  currency,  to  whom  politics  is  merely  a  means 
for  getting  and  securing  places!"  What  wonder  that  our 
municipal  government  should  be  overrun  by  an  army  of  pot- 
house politicians,  who  do  the  dirty  work  of  politics,  who  shield 
dives  and  dens,  who  protect  law-breakers  in  the  interest  of 
law-makers!  What  wonder  that  our  national  conscience  and 
our  sense  of  patriotism  should  become  weakened  under  the 
treachery  of  those  pledged  to  uphold  the  integrity  of  the  city, 
state  or  nation,  and  that  our  Government  of  and  by  and  for 
the  people,  for  which  our  fathers  fought  and  died,  and  which 
we  inherited  as  a  sacred  heirloom,  should  be  bequeathed  to 
our  children  with  the  blight  of  realism  upon  it! 

And  yet,  I  believe  that  realism  has  run  its  race.     Intoxi- 
cated by  its   success   in  social  and  political  life,  in  the  novel, 
drama  and  press,  it  has  ventured  into  the  realm 

Realism   attacks  r         1-     •  1^1  •*  -11  i 

reii-:on    ol   rehgiou,  and  there  its  rapid  advance  has  met 

its   first,   signal  check.      Within  man's  Holy  of 

Holies  it  planted  its  Mag,  bearing  the  inscription:   "There  is 

no  God!     There  is  no  accounting  yonder,  and  no  accounting 

here,  if  one  be  but  shrewd  enough!     The  Bible  is  but  a  piece 


53 

of  Asiatic  superstition!"  Men  stood  horror-stricken  at  its  in- 
solence and  blasphemy,  and,  on  recovering  themselves,  cried  a 
Halt!  loud  enough  even  for  realism  to  become  alarmed.  The 
reaction  set  in  when  the  novel  began  to  disseminate  the  gospel 
of  godlessness;  when  the  drama  began  to  rant  that  conscience 
is  but  a  nursery  bugaboo;  when  the  press  began  to  preach  that 
its  power  is  to  be  feared  more  than  that  of  God;  when  poli- 
ticians, like  Senator  Ingalls,  dared  to  proclaim  that  the  Deca- 
logue and  the  Golden  Rule  have  no  place  in  politics. 

Like  many  a  former  ism,  realism  received  its  blow,  when 
it  sought  to  lay  violent  hands  on  religion.  When  men  were 
bidden  to  turn  churches  into  houses  of  pleasure, 


it  gradually  dawned  upon  them,  that  it  would  "8  met 


not  be  long  before  schools  and  libraries  and  art 
galleries  and  conservatories  would  be  turned  into  barracks  and 
armories.  When  men  were  asked  to  extinguish  the  lights 
that  pointed  the  way  to  the  peaceful  harbors  of  life,  they  re- 
called the  objections  that  were  raised  by  the  wreckers  of 
Florida  to  the  erection  of  light-houses  along  the  dangerous 
coral-reefs.  When  men  were  told  that  the  highest  duty  of  life 
was  merely  to  eat  and  drink  and  be  merry,  they  recalled  the 
question  and  answer  of  vShakespeare: 

''What  is  man 

If  his  chief  good,  and  market  of  his  time, 
Be  but  to  sleep  and  feed  ?  a  beast,  no  more." 

And  the  answer  means  a  gradual  cleansing  of  social  and 
political  life,  a  gradual  purification  of  novel,  drama  and  press, 
a  gradual  return  from  realism  to  idealism. 


Jtema  0f 

VI— IDEALISM 


A  SUNDAY  DISCOURSE 

BKFOKE    THE 

REFORM  CONGREGATION  KENESETH  ISRAEL, 

BY 

RABBI  JOSEPH  KRAUSKOPF,  D.  D. 

Philadelphia,  April  3d,  iqo4. 


Text :  "  Man  doth  not  live  by  bread  only."     DEUT.  vni.  3. 
SCRIPTURAL  WESSON  :  ISAIAH,  Chapter  xi. 


It  is  mere  chance,  yet  a  happy  one,  that  the  succession  of 
discourses,  in  our  present  series  on  Some  Isms  of  To-Day, 
brings  Idealism  to  this  day.  What  theme  is  more  Pascovei,  and  Eas. 
fitting  for  the  Passover  Festival  and  the  Easter  ter  ceiebrata  hero- 
Sunday  !  What  are  both  these  sacred  seasons  but  ism  of  idealism' 
Idealism's  proudest  contribution  to  civilization!  What  is  the 
purpose  of  the  solemn  and  festive  observance  of  these  days 
but  that  the  events  and  heroism  which  they  commemorate, 
might  kindle  noble  ideals  in  our  hearts,  and  inspire  imitation 
of  the  illustrious  examples  they  set! 

With  the  story  of  the  Passover  and  Easter  fresh  in  our 
minds,  the  subject  of  idealism,  that  otherwise  might  have 
been  quite  difficult  for  discussion,  becomes  com-  [dea|ist  n  t  a  fa 
paratively  easy.  In  general,  idealism  is  not  a  vorite  at  present 
favorite  theme  with  present-day  audiences.  The  time' 
American  prides  himself  on  his  practicality.  The  idealist  is 
held  to  be  the  theorist,  the  dreamer,  the  visionary,  the  self- 
deluded  crank. 

It  is  the  practical  man  that  commands  admiration  in  these 
days,  more  especially  the  man  who  is  eminently  successful  by 
reason  of  his  practicality.  This  is  the  age  in  The  practlcal  man 
which  Wall  Street  rules,  in  which  the  Stock  the  favorite  of  to- 
Exchange  is  dictator  over  the  minds  of  people,  day' 
in  which  the  latest  quotations  on  cotton,  corn  or  iron,  are 


56 

wider  disseminated  than  quotations  from  the  latest  book,  poem 
or  sermon;  in  which  the  rise  of  the  Leiters  and  the  Sully s  is 
louder  heralded  than  the  advent  of  a  new  star  in  the  world  of 
letters  or  art  or  religion;  in  which  the  goings  and  comings  of 
the  Carnegies  and  Schwabs  are  more  minutely  chronicled  in' 
the  public  press  than  the  sayings  and  doings  of  the  world's 
educators  and  reformers.  The  exemplars  set  before  youth 
are  the  Goulds  and  the  Elkins,  the  men  who  started  with 
nothing  and  died  multi-millionaires;  the  ideals  are  no  longer 
the  heroes  and  martyrs  who  started  poor  and  died  worse 
than  poor,  died  in  the  wilderness  like  Moses,  or  on  the  cross 
like  Jesus,  or  on  the  scaffold  like  Rabbi  Akiba,  John  Huss, 
Savanarola,  Giordano  Bruno. 

There  is  no  denial  that,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  prac- 
tical man,  the  men  whom  I  have  named,  and  others  like  them, 
True  idealists  have  been  failures.  There  is  no  denial  that 
have  been  dream-  many  of  the  prophets  of  old  ate  the  bread  of 
ers  and  failures.  aifliction  for  their  heroic  daring  for  mankind's 

good,  that  reformers  sacrificed  their  own  liberty  in  freeing 
others  from  slavery,  that  heroes  poured  out  their  heart's  blood 
to  save  the  lives  of  others.  There  is  no  denial  that  Lessing 
died  so  poor  that  friends  had  to  make  up  a  purse  to  defray  the 
funeral  expenses,  and  that  Mozart,  the  composer  of  fourteen 
Operas,  seventeen  Symphonies  and  dozens  of  Cantatas  and 
Serenades,  about  eight  hundred  compositions  in  all,  was  buried 
in  a  Potter's  field,  and  to  this  day  sleeps  in  an  unknown  grave, 
which  not  even  the  grave  digger  could  point  out  to  the  widow 
a  month  after  her  husband's  death.  There  is  no  denial  that 
ignorance  and  insolence  and  ridicule  pursued  Columbus  before 
his  discovery  of  America,  and  that  poverty,  malice,  imprison- 
ment, indignities  of  all  sorts  hounded  him  into  the  grave. 
There  is  no  denial  that  Dante  was  innocently  condemned  to  be 
burnt  alive,  and  that  he  had  to  descend  into  an  exile's  grave 
unpitied  and  unhonored;  and  that  bitter  persecution  harassed 
the  days  of  Milton's  prime  of  life,  and  that  his  declining  years 
were  darkened  by  poverty  more  than  b)^  blindness. 

And  yet,  I  ask  you,  would  you  not  this  day,  exchange 
their  failure  for  your  success  ?  Would  you  not  rather  be  a 


57 

Moses,  dying  in  the  wilderness,  a  Jesus  suffering  And  ^  t 
on  the  cross,  a  Socrates  draining  the  poison-cup,  greatest  sue- 
than  even  the  most  prosperous  of  practical  men  ?  cesses  of  hlsto|iy- 
Would  you  have  willingly  consented  to  their  change  from 
idealism  to  realism,  had  you  lived  in  their  day,  and  had  you 
then  had  a  knowledge  of  the  infinite  good  they  were  to  exercise 
in  the  progress  of  man  ?  Or  do  you  think  that,  could  they 
live  their  lives  over  again,  they  would  exchange  their  idealism 
for  the  more  profitable  life  of  the  realist  ?  With  all  their  fail- 
ures, have  they  not  proven  the  greatest  successes  recorded  in 
history?  With  all  their  failures,  are  not  our  lives  richer, 
fuller,  better,  for  the  truths  they  taught,  for  the  light  they 
shed,  for  the  work  they  did  ?  With  all  their  failures,  had  not 
their  labors  a  recompense  such  as  the  success  of  even  the  most 
profitable  career  cannot  equal  ?  What  is  the  reward  of  mere 
gold  compared  with  their  glorious  vision  of  ultimate  triumph  ? 
Had  not  Moses  his  vision  of  the  promised  land  ?  Did  not 
Jesus  walk  the  via  ctucis,  sustained  by  the  conviction  that  the 
path  of  mankind  will  some  day  be  the  smoother  for  his  walk- 
ing it  with  brow  lacerated  by  Roman  torture,  with  back 
scourged  by  the  Roman  tyrant,  with  body  bowed  low  by  the 
weight  of  the  cross,  on  which  the  cruel  Roman  was  but  to 
transfigure  the  patriot  of  Israel  into  the  idol  of  mankind  ? 

The  very  nature  of  idealism  prevents  its  devotees  from 
seeing  their  ideals  realized  in  their  own  time.  The  greater 
the  ideal  the  further  it  must  of  necessity  lie,  and  |dea||  impoS8,ble 
the  more  difficult  and  the  slower  must  its  real-  of  immediate  real- 
ization be.  No  sooner  does  fulfilment  crown  one  ization> 
part  of  it  than  a  dozen  newer  and  higher  vistas  open  to  the 
view.  Our  standard  of  excellence  rises  with  the  rise  of  our 
mentality  and  spirituality  and  achievements.  No  true  artist 
or  author  or  reformer  has  ever  actualized  the  vision  of  his 
ideal.  The  nearer  he  seems  to  approach  it  the  further  it  flees 
from  him.  The  story  is  told  of  a  great  artist  being  discovered 
one  day  sitting  in  tears  in  front  of  a  painting  he  had  just  com- 
pleted. The  friend,  surprised  to  find  him  in  tears,  said  cheer- 
ingly  to  him,  "  What  do  these  tears  mean,  Man?  This  is  the 
greatest  painting  you  ever  turned  out?  The  Artist  responded, 
' '  This  is  the  first  time  in  life  that  I  am  satisfied  with  a  work 


58 

of  mine,  and  I  weep  because  of  the  satisfaction.  Whenever 
an  Artist  begins  to  be  satisfied  with  his  work,  his  decline  has 
begun." 

How  much  more,  therefore,  does  the  nature  of  idealism 
prevent  the  realist  from  seeing  in  the  idealist  anything  but 
a  dreamer  and  a  visionary,  one  who  is  everlast- 
"^^  talking  of  tllinSs  which  no  one  sees,  which 
never  come  to  pass,  or  the  possibility  of  which 
can  scarcely  be  conceived.  It  was  no  doubt  hard  for  a  Pharaoh 
to  grasp  the  thought  that  freedom  is  a  people's  inalienable  right 
when  he  drove  Moses  from  his  presence  as  a  dreamer.  Yet  he 
saw  the  dream  crystallizing  into  reality  at  the  shores  of  the 
Red  Sea.  It  was  no  doubt  hard  for  Pontius  Pilate  to  grasp 
the  thought  that  right  is  greater  than  might,  and  God  more 
powerful  than  Csesar  when  he  nailed  the  patriot  of  Nazareth 
upon  the  cross  as  a  visionary  and  a  dangerous  agitator.  Yet 
the  idealist  of  Judea  conquered  realistic  Rome. 

What  men  call  dreams  are  often  but  realities  in  progress; 
what  they  ridicule  as  visions  are  but  facts  slowly  taking  form. 
There  has  never  been  a  reality  that  has  not 
precedes' thTreai.  emerged  from  a  one-time  ideality;  never  a  fact 
that  has  not  first  been  a  fancy  in  some  one's 
mind.  Idealism  crossed  the  unknown  deep  before  Columbus 
set  sail.  Idealism  traversed  the  Atlantic  before  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers  set  their  faces  westward.  Idealism  rang  liberty 
throughout  the  land  before  the  memorable  Fourth  of  July  of 
1776.  Idealism  freed  the  slave  before  President  Lincoln  issued 
his  emancipation  edict. 

The  sun's  progress  is  no  less  a  reality  when  the  first  faint 

rays  of  dawn  shoot   above  the  horizon  than  when    his  fiery 

beams  dart  from  the  zenith  at  noon.     The  ideal- 

'ahLd'oThistime"  ist  is  bllt  ahead  of  his  time.  He  stands  upon 
elevated  ground,  and  catches  glimpses  of  the  ap- 
proaching dawn  while  around  him  all  is  still  buried  in  dark- 
ness. He  has  the  prophetic  eye;  he  has  the  magnified  vision; 
he  sees  lights  and  truths  that  others  cannot  see,  and  has  reve- 
lations of  things  that  others  cannot  even  conceive.  His  sole 
offense  lies  in  his  telling  what  he  sees  and  hears,  his  demand- 
ing what  must  and  shall  be,  his  opposing,  all  alone,  what,  in 


59 

due  time,  will  be  driven  out  by  the  mad  shout  of  the  millions. 
He  is  called  the  dreamer,  the  visionary,  the  idealist,  the  en- 
thusiast, for  telling  of  what  is  destined  to  become  the  most 
practical  thing  on  earth.  On  my  study  wall  hangs  a  copy  of 
Barabino's  Painting  "Columbus  at  the  University  of  Sala- 
manca." It  tells  a  pathetic  story.  A  Commission  of  that 
celebrated  seat  of  learning  had  sat  in  judgment  upon  Colum- 
bus' claim,  that,  by  sailing  westward,  a  shorter  route  to  India 
than  was  then  known,  might  be  discovered.  The  learned 
faculty  had  declared  his  proposition  and  his  evidences  mon- 
strously absurd, 

Columbus  sits  disheartened  upon  a  bench.  The  learned 
professors,  cardinals  and  Bishops  file  past,  casting  mocking 
glances  at  him,  some  of  them  tapping  their  forehead  to  indi- 
cate that  there  was  but  one  road  open  to  the  would-be  discov- 
erer of  new  routes — "The  road  to  the  mad-house."  It 
was  thus  that  wise-acres  spoke  of  Gutenberg,  when  he  pro- 
posed duplicating  manuscripts  by  means  of  a  printing-press. 
It  was  thus  they  spoke  when  Stephenson  proposed  his  loco- 
motive, Fulton  his  steamboat,  Morse  his  telegraph,  Marconi 
his  wireless  telegraphy. 

Idealists  are  often  our  greatest  realists,   so-called   cranks 
often  our  wisest  men.     It  is  they  who  make   the  unknown 
known,  the  unseen  visible,  the  impossible  possi- 
ble.     It   is  they  who  dream  into  reality  steam,    Dreamer8  often 

WIG6SI  3W3KG. 

electricity  and  the  thousand  other  inventions  and 
discoveries  that  bless  civilization.  It  is  they  who  plant  bright 
and  fragrant  flowers  among  the  thorns  and  thistles,  and  make 
the  waste  and  wilderness  blossom  like  the  rose.  It  is  they 
who  right  our  wrongs,  who  heal  our  sores,  who  ease  our  bur- 
dens, who  soften  our  asperities  It  is  they  who  feed  our 
heart-hunger,  and  quench  our  sole-thirst.  It  is  they  who 
teach  that  man  does  not  live  by  bread  alone,  that  life  does  not 
mean  toiling  so  many  hours  for  the  purpose  of  feeding  the 
stomach  so  many  times  a  day. 

The  prophets  of  old  were  but  speakers,  Shakespeare  and 
Goethe  were  but  writers,  Michael  Angelo  and  Raphael  were 
but  painters,  Beethoven  and  Mendelssohn  but  composers, 
yet,  idealists  though  they  were,  what  practical  merchant  or 


manufacturer  or  capitalist  has  wielded  the  influence  upon 
civilization  that  they  have  wielded,  or  has  blessed  mankind 
as  they.  What  man  more  ridiculed  than  Galileo,  when 
he  told  that  our  earth  and  its  sister  planets  revolve  around 
the  sun  ?  Professors  of  Universities  refused  even  to  look 
through  the  telescope  he  had  invented.  They  were  too 
practical  to  waste  their  time  on  a  fool.  The  only  cure 
for  such  blasphemers  and  madmen  as  he  was  the  Inquisi- 
tion. What  man  more  ridiculed  than  Schlieman  when  he 
proposed  to  prove  that  ancient  Troy  was  a  reality  and  not  a 
myth,  by  unearthing  it?  What  man  more  set  upon  as  a  mad- 
man, than  Palissy  when  in  his  effort  to  produce  white  enamel 
he  was  unpractical  enough  to  burn,  for  the  want  of  wood  and 
money,  even  the  little  furniture  of  his  poverty-stricken  home  ? 
Time  has  shown  that  it  is  often  the  ridiculed  and  persecuted 
crank  who  turns  the  wheels  of  progress,  that  it  is  the  "hot- 
headed" enthusiast  who  keeps  the  heart  of  mankind  from 
freezing,  and  who  makes  it  possible  for  this  old  world  of  ours 
to  rejuvenate  itself  every  little  while. 

And  time  has  also  shown  that  that  is  the  greatest  people 

that  counts  the  largest  number  of  idealists.     The  truest  pride 

of  a  nation  is  not  its  busy  marts,  its  filled  gran- 

progress i  of  world       j        j       crowded    harbors,    but   its    poets   and 

due  to  idealism.  * 

philosophers,  its  scientists  and  inventors,  its 
apostles  of  sweetness  and  light,  its  reformers  and  martyrs. 
The  culture  of  Germany  is  not  a  result  of  the  victories  of 
Frederick  the  Great  or  of  William  I.  but  of  its  universities. 
Oxford  has  clone  more  for  the  British  people  than  the  Bank  of 
England.  The  T^ouvre  has  done  more  for  France  than  have 
the  trades-people  of  the  Boulevards  of  Paris.  Much  as  Wall 
vStreet  may  mean  to  our  country,  Harvard  or  Yale  or  Princeton 
mean  infinitely  more.  Much  as  Market  or  Chestnut  Street 
may  contribute  to  the  wealth  of  our  city,  our  richest  treasure 
flows  from  the  University  of  Pennsylvania.  It  was  not  the 
commerce  of  Boston  or  Newport  or  Philadelphia  but  the  ideal- 
ism of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  that  laid  the  foundation  to  our 
prosperity.  It  was  not  the  wealth  of  Solomon,  nor  the  power 
of  Herod  but  the  spirituality  of  the  prophets  of  Israel  that  has 
humanized  half  of  mankind.  It  is  not  to  the  practical  men  of 


6i 

ancient  Greece,  but  to  Homer  and  Hesiod,  to  Phidias  and 
Praxiteles,  to  Plato  and  Aristotle,  to  whom  the  world  is  in- 
debted for  half  its  beauty  and  half  its  light. 

I  wish  some  Carnegie  might  rise  in  our  midst,  and  open 
in  our  beautiful  Fairmount  Park  an  Avenue  of  Fame ',  a  prome- 
nade ornamented  with  dozens  of  statues  of  the  Avenue  of  Fame 
world's  greatest  men.  to  serve  as  inspiration  to  lined  with  statues 
our  young,  as  "sermons  in  stone"  as  to  the  kind  c 
of  life  to  lead,  if  one  would  live  blessedly  unto  the  end  of  time. 
And  were  yours  the  right  to  name  the  men  whose  statues 
should  ornament  such  an  Avenue  of  fame,  whom  would  you 
select  ?  Would  it  be  your  great  realists,  your  great,  practical 
money-getters  ?  Would  you  not  rather  name  the  great  poets 
and  dramatists  and  novelists,  the  great  architects  and  sculptors 
and  painters  and  musicians,  the  great  religious  founders  and 
reformers  and  martyrs,  the  great  philosophers  and  preachers 
and  moralists,  the  great  historians  and  statesmen  and  orators, 
the  great  scientists,  inventors  and  philanthropists — all,  all 
idealists,  man}'  of  them  ridiculed  and  denounced  and  persecuted 
in  their  day,  as  dreamers  and  idlers  and  visionaries,  as  agita- 
tors, rebels  and  traitors. 

I  know  of  nothing  that  is  as  much  needed  as  an  infusion 
of  idealism  into  the  intense  materialism  of  the  present  day. 
The  poison  of  our  realism  needs  neutralizing.  |nfusion  of  jdea|_ 
We  are  idolizing  material  success.  We  are  \vor-  ism  needed  into 
shipping  money-kings.  We  are  raising  the  bank-  »"'i"t««« ««««•" 
book  to  the  sacredness  of  the  Bible.  We  are  placing  money- 
success  on  pedestals  so  high  that  it  fairly  eclipses  every  other 
achievement.  While  abroad  last  Summer,  I  was  asked  by  a 
gentleman,  what  cities  I  had  visited.  Among  others  I 
mentioned  Weimar.  "Weimar,  Weimar,  why  what  is  that?  " 
asked  the  gentleman.  I  told  him  that  it  was  the  capitol  of 
Saxony-Weimar.  "  Anything  of  interest  to  be  seen  there?  " 
asked  he.  "Yes,"  I  answered,  "a  Cemetery,  more  especially 
a  certain  tomb."  An  amused  smile  spread  over  the  face 
of  the  gentleman  at  that  excentricity  of  mine  that  leads 
me  into  Cemeteries  and  to  tombs,  when  I  might  see  the 
gay  sights  of  the  gay  capitols  of  Europe.  I  observed  that 
I  wras  talking  to  a  materialist,  to  one  wrhose  pocket  had  grown 


62 

much  faster  than  his  brain,  when  I  told  him  that  I  had  made 
a  pilgrimage  to  the  city  that  Goethe  and  Schiller  had  made 
one  of  the  most  celebrated  in  the  world  of  letters,  and  that  it 
was  one  of  the  most  sacred  moments  of  my  life,  when  I  stooped 
at  the  coffins  in  which  these  stars  of  the  literary  world  slept  in 
immortality's  sleep,  side  by  side,  and  that  I  prized  the  leaf 
taken  from  the  wreath  deposited  upon  their  coffins  by  the  hand 
of  an  Emperor  more  highly  than  the  precious  diamond  he  had 
purchased  in  a  celebrated  Parisian  shop. 

I  am  not  one  of  those  who  lives  in  the  clouds.     I  do  not 
depreciate  the  value  of  the  practical  and  the  material.    I  know 
we  need  the  plow  as  well  as  the  pen,  and  the 
8      trowel  as  wel1  as  the  Palette,  and  the  hammer 

* 

as  well  as  the  baton.  I  know  that  the  trader 
and  the  mechanic  have  their  place  in  the  econom)'  of  civiliza- 
tion as  much  as  the  poet  and  the  philosopher.  I  know  the 
value  of  money  in  the  progress  of  society,  as  a  means  of  pro- 
moting education,  of  developing  industries,  of  stimulating 
enterprises  of  discovery,  invention  and  public  improvement. 
I  know  that  without  money  the  inventive  genius  of  an  Edison 
would  be  greatly  crippled,  if  not  wholly  stifled. 

But  I  protest  against  those  standards  that  debase  life  to 
mere  money-grubbing.  I  would  redeem  men  from  their  self- 
its  value  debased  enslavement.  I  would  emancipate  them  from 
if  exclusively  pur-  their  treadmill  existence.  I  would  break  their 
fetters  and  lead  them  forth  to  where  the  vistas 
are  wide,  to  where  there  is  a  sky  overhead,  to  where  the 
flowers  grow  at  their  feet,  to  where  the  birds  sing,  and  the 
stars  twinkle  their  messages  from  the  unseen  spheres,  and 
where  the  mind  may  hold  communion  with  the  majesty  of 
God.  I  would  consecrate  them  to  noble  ideals,  and  make 
these  the  goals  of  their  moral  and  spiritual  and  intellectual 
endeavor.  And  this  I  would  do  without  interfering  with  their 
material  pursuits.  I  would  merely  idealize  the  real.  I  would 
have  every  man  add  to  the  real  an  ideal  as  an  avocation.  I 
would  have  him  weave  threads  of  sweetness  and  light,  of  noble 
endeavor,  of  lofty  aspirations,  into  the  texture  of  his  daily  life. 

No  life  is  complete  that  has  not  some  ideal  to  cherish, 
lie  whose  eye  is  so  blind  that  in  a  society  such  as  ours  he 


63 

cannot  see  a  wrong  that  needs  righting  or  a  good 
worth  striving  for,  lives  but  an  animal  life;  his 
spiritual  life  is  undeveloped  or  dead.  Voltaire 
said  of  Rousseau's  doctrine  that  he  preached  the  return  to 
animalism  so  eloquently  that  he  almost  persuaded  men  to  go 
on  all  fours.  That  witticism  well  applies  to  some  men  I  know. 
They  might  just  as  well  have  been  beasts  of  burden, — camels 
trudging  through  the  joyless,  dangerous,  scorching  desert, 
laden  down  with  treasures  for  others  to  enjoy. 

What  charm,  what  pleasant  diversion  the  cultivation  and 
pursuit  of  some  noble  ideal  might  give  to  the  monotony  and 

drudgery  of  their  lives  !     What  if  he  who  labors 

Blessings  of  ideals 
ten  or  twelve  or  sixteen  hours  a  day  were  to 

devote  one  hour,  or  but  half  or  quarter  of  an  hour  each  day  to 
the  planting  of  some  little  flower  in  the  desert  of  his  life, — to 
the  furthering  of  some  deserving  object,  to  aiding  some  worthy 
cause,  to  drinking  in  some  ennobling  knowledge,  to  saying 
some  cheering  word.  Many  hearts  ache;  many  feet  stumble; 
much  wrong  is  done.  What  if  each  of  us  were  to  devote  a  few 
minutes  time,  to  drying  even  but  a  single  tear,  to  bringing  even 
but  a  single  smile  into  faces  that  have  well-nigh  forgotten  the 
meaning  of  laughter!  We  are  conscious  of  many  failings  of 
our  own.  We  hurt  the  feelings  of  others,  often  our  dearest, 
by  our  ill  tempers,  by  our  selfishness  and  exactions,  by  our 
want  of  consideration,  by  our  domineering  tone,  by  our  rash- 
ness and  bluntness.  We  are  envious  of  the  successes  of  others. 
We  are  slaves  to  base  lusts.  What  if  we  were  to  devote  a  little 
time  daily  to  introspection,  to  plucking  out  even  a  single  one 
of  those  noxious  weeds  that  poison  our  lives  and  the  lives  of 
others!  There  is  so  much  knowledge  in  the  world  of  which  we 
are  ignorant,  and  which  we  might  easily  know;  so  much  beauty 
within  easy  reach,  which  we  have  not  seen.  What  if  each  of 
us  were  to  devote  but  a  little  time  daily  to  passing  from  our 
stupefying  ignorance  into  region:;  where  the  starved  mind  may 
be  nourished  with  wholesome  food,  and  the  beauty-thirsting 
eye  may  light  upon  what  is  pleasant  to  behold  and  sweet  to 
remember!  Our  libraries  are  filled  with  the  stories  of  hundreds 
of  illustrious  men,  whose  lowly  origin,  bitter  struggles  and 
proud  achievements,  are  an  inspiration  to  the  soul.  What  if  we 


64 

would  make  it  a  solemn  duty  to  devote  but  one  hour  a  week 
to  acquainting  ourselves  with  the  stories  of  such  lives,  and  use 
them  as  guide-posts  to  point  the  way  we  should  go,  if  we 
would  mount  the  heights. 

A  certain  man  owned  a  strip  of  land  that  reached  out  into 
the  ocean  whose  briny  breath  prevented  vegetation.  After 
repeated  failures,  he  built  around  it  a  closely- woven  screen, 
which  sifted  the  air,  strained  out  the  saline  particles,  collected 
thick  incrustations  of  salt  on  the  outside  and  ripened  rich 
vegetation  within.  Idealism  builds  such  a  protecting  screen 
around  our  souls,  keeps  the  blighting  salt  without,  and  fosters 
within,  the  blossoms  of  balmy  spring  and  the  golden  fruit  of 
genial  summer. 

And  once  the  seed  of  idealism  is  rooted,  cold  cannot  chill 
its  enthusiasm;  blight  cannot  stunt  its  growth;  palace-luxuries 
cannot  corrupt  it,  nor  prison-walls  crush  it. 
Moses0.  tr'Umph  °'  Kven  though  compelled  to  flee,  even  though 
obliged  to  lead  a  shepherd's  life  in  the  wilderness, 
the  ideal  burns  and  burns  in  Moses,  and  will  not  cease  burning. 
And  out  of  the  flame  of  his  enthusiasm  there  rises  again  and 
again  the  mandate:  "Get  thee  into  Egypt  and  deliver  thy 
people."  And  though  a  thousand  voices  tell  why  he  should 
not  go,  louder  and  louder  rises  the  cry  of  the  oppressed 
till  the  idealist  changes  the  shepherd's  crook  for  the  reformer's 
staff,  and  wins  the  world's  first  and  greatest  victory  for  political 
and  religious  liberty. 

Though  small  the  hope  of  coping  successfully  with  almighty 
Rome,  forth  goes  the  idealist  of  Nazareth,  kindles  enthusiasm 
Led  to  victorious  a11  the  way  down  to  Judea,  fearlessly  enters  Jeru- 
martyrdom  of  salem,  the  stronghold  of  the  oppressor,  and  even 
though  he  fails,  the  crown  of  thorns  which  the 
cruel  Roman  places  on  his  head,  in  mockery  of  the  would-be- 
king  of  Israel,  is  a  prouder  insignia  of  regal  glory  than  is  all 
the  power  in  the  hand  of  the  Procurator  of  Rome. 

To  idealists  success  is  nothing;  noble  endeavor  is  all.  In 
what  they  aspire  to  be  or  do  lies  their  comfort.  It  is  never  in 
failure  in  a  noble  cause  wherein  defeat  lies;  defeat  lies  in  base 
persistence  in  the  low  and  selfish  and  sordid.  Even  in  the 
mere  cherishing  of  an  ideal  lies  the  seed  of  present  joy,  nestles 
the  blossom  of  future  fruit. 


of 

VII— DOWIEISM. 


A  SUNDAY  DISCOURSE 

BKFOKE    THB 

REFORM  CONGREGATION  KENESETH  ISRAEL, 

BY 

RABBI  JOSEPH  KRAUSKOPF,  D.  D. 

Philadelphia,  April  loth,  1004. 


Text :  "  His  mouth  is  full  of  cursing  and  fraud    ....  under  his  tongue  is  mis- 
chief and  iniquity."    PSALM  x,  7. 

SCRIPTURAL  WESSON  :  I  KINGS  xxi. 


It  was  a  strange  host,  that  which  invaded  New  York  in 
October  last.  From  the  city  of  Chicago  it  came,  three  thou- 
sand strong,  for  the  purpose  of  converting  the 
wicked  metropolis  of  the  land  into  a  Holy  Zion. 
At  its  head  came  its  picturesque  leader,  armed 
with  a  plenteous  supply  of  titles:  Elijah  the  Third;  John,  the 
Baptist,  the  Second;  John  Alexander  Dowie,  the  First,  the 
Prophet,  Latter-Day  Messiah,  Divine  Healer,  Messenger  of 
the  Covenant,  Grand  Overseer  of  the  Christian  Catholic  Church 
of  Zion. 

'  And  stranger  still  was  the  attack  which  the  Restoration 
Host  of  Zion  made  on  the  wickedness  of  Gath.  In  large  num- 
bers the  people  flocked  into  spacious  Madison  Square  Garden, 
many  of  them  no  doubt  to  scoff,  but,  unlike  the  scoffers  of 
Goldsmith's  Deserted  Village,  they  did  not  remain  to  pray. 
They  came  to  see  a  crusade,  and  found  a  burlesque;  they  came 
to  hear  the  effusions  of  a  prophet,  and  listened  to  the  billings- 
gate of  a  fishwife. 

An  event  so  out  of  the  usual  as  this,  and  a  personality  so 
strange  as  that  of  Dowie,  require  more  than  a  moment's 
thought  and  an  unceremonious  dismissal.  Who 
and  what  is  Dowie  ?  Are  his  claims  warranted,  or  *h°' 
is  he  an  impostor  or  an  egomaniac  or  a  paranoeac  ? 


66 

What  divine  messenger  proclaimed  him  Messiah  ?  What  heav- 
enly portents  announced  the  coining  of  this  Restorer?  What 
marvellous  cures  has  he  wrought  to  be  titled  Divine  Healer  ? 
What  wonderful  revelations  has  he  made  to  win  for  him- 
self not  only  the  faith  but  also  the  worldly  goods  of  his  thou- 
sands of  followers  ? 

John  Alexander  Dowie  is  a  native  of  Edinburgh.  His 
childhood  was  spent  in  Scotland;  his  j^outh  in  the  mercantile 
His  childhood  world  of  Australia,  during  its  boom,  where  he 
youth  and  no  doubt  acquired  the  methods  that  characterize 

CALL'"  all  his  divine  healing  enterprises.  For  some 
reason,  he  exchanged  his  business  career  for  theology,  per- 
haps because  he  even  then  perceived  that  credulous  church 
people,  more  especially  hysterical  women,  can  easier  be  fleeced 
than  shrewd  business  men.  He  entered  upon  independent 
evangelical  work,  where  his  bizarre  eloquence  and  magnetic 
personality  soon  won  for  him  reputation  and  following.  One 
night,  he  claims,  there  burst  upon  him,  as  if  in  a  vision,  the 
full  force  of  the  sixteenth  chapter  of  St.  Mark:  "  He  that  be- 

lieveth  and  is  baptized  shall  be  saved In  my  name 

shall  they  cast  out  devils.  .  .  .  They  shall  lay  hands  on  the 
sick,  and  the}'  shall  recover."  A  voice  within  told  him  that 
he  was  the  Elijah,  whose  return  was  foretold  in  the  clos- 
ing verses  of  the  Book  of  Malachi,  and  to  make  a  practical 
test  of  this  inspiration,  he  laid  his  hands  on  his  wife's  head, 
prayed,  cured  her  of  headache — and,  as  has  been  wittingly 
said,  proceeded  forthwith  to  lay  hands  on  everybody  and  every- 
thing, and  to  such  an  extent,  that  he  is  to-day  reputed  to  be 
owner  of  a  snug  fortune. 

His  rise  to  notoriety  and  wealth  was  rapid.  He  organized 
an  International  Divine  Healing  Association  with  himself  as 
c-  aniz"  DIVINE  President.  With  shrewd  business  sense,  he  es- 
KEALirjG  ASSO-  tablished  his  headquarters  at  Chicago,  during 
the  year  of  the  World's  Fair.  He  soon  became 
one  of  its  chief  attractions,  and  was  kept  busy  day  and  night, 
effecting  or  promising  cures,  aided  by  an  army  of  missionaries, 
propagandists,  deacons,  disciples.  Printing  presses  were  kept 
going  day  and  night,  turning  out  his  publication,  entitled 
"  Leaves  of  Healing,"  containing  thrilling  accounts  of  mirac- 


67 

ulous  cures  effected,  and  photographs  and  testimonials  of  hun- 
dreds of  the  cured.  Our  own  Munyon  is  great,  yet  not  even 
he  is  fit  "  to  loose  the  latchet  of  the  shoes ' '  of  the  greatest  of 
all  patent  medicine  advertisers,  Elijah  III.  Again  and  again 
he  came  in  conflict  with  the  police  authorities,  courting  arrest, 
on  the  one  side,  for  advertising  purposes,  and  claiming  immu- 
nity, on  the  other  side,  on  the  ground  that  his  was  a  religious 
movement. 

The   Fair  over,  he  established  himself   in  the  heart    of 
Chicago,  where  he  acquired  property  stretching  over  six  blocks, 
all  of  which  he  needed  for  his  various  divine  heal-   Establishes  the 
ing  establishments.     There  was  the  Zion  church,    Christian  Catholic 

Church  of  Zion. 

the  Zion  hospital,  the  Zion  bank,  the  Zion  col- 
lege, the  Zion  school,  the  Zion  hotel,  the  Zion  printing-house, 
the  Zion  store.  His  next  move  was  the  establishment,  amid 
great  flare  of  trumpets,  of  the  Christian  Catholic  Church  of 
Zion,  with  himself  as  General  Overseer  over  everybody  and 
everything  that  could  in  any  way  contribute  to  its  financial 
welfare.  All  property,  stock  and  finances  were  vested  in  his 
name,  he  giving  personal  notes  and  promising  interest  on  all 
monies  advanced. 

His  next  move  was  renting  the  vast  Auditorium  theatre 
of  Chicago  for  holding  Sunday  afternoon  services.  More 
picturesque  services  than  these  have  proba-  Conduc!s  femark. 
bly  never  been  held  in  the  United  States.  There  able  services  at 
were  imposing  processions;  there  was  the  choir  Audltorlum  theatr* 
of  five  hundred  in  white;  there  were  "the  seventies,"  in 
black  cap  and  gown;  there  were  the  uniformed  and  robed  Zion 
guards,  all  moving  and  marching  in  a  manner  that  would  have 
done  credit  to  the  best  of  French  ballet-masters;  and  with 
himself,  robed  in  flowing  garb  of  black  and  white,  as  the 
centre  of  attraction,  and  aided  by  the  hysteria  of  his  followers, 
he  produced  an  effect  which  swayed  and  mesmerized  the  thou- 
sands that  thronged  to  his  services,  and  which  enormously  en- 
riched the  coffers  of  the  bank  of  Zion. 

His  next  move  was  the  establishment  of  Zion  City.  He 
purchased  a  tract  of  six  thousand  acres  of  land,  some  forty 
miles  north  of  Chicago,  at  a  cost  of  one  and 

Founds  Zion  City. 

a  quarter  million  of  dollars,  which  money  was 


68 

again  advanced  by  his  followers,  and  to  whom,  in  apprecia- 
tion, he  sold  dwelling  lots  at  enormous  profits.  And  upon 
that  tract  of  land  he  built  homes,  factories,  hotels,  stores,  and 
an  elaborate  divine  healing  plant,  around  a  magnificent  church. 
His  alluring  advertisements  of  bargains  in  homes  and  bargains 
in  health,  his  promise  of  from  8  to  12  per  cent  interest  annu- 
ally on  investments  in  Zion  City,  and  yet  other  attractions, 
such  as  the  exclusion  of  the  saloon,  dancing-halls,  theatre, 
disreputable  characters,  tempted  the  pious,  and  in  a  short  time 
the  community  of  Zion  City  counted  some  twelve  thousand 
souls. 

Gradually  mutterings  of  distrust  became  audible.  Elijah 
III  began  to  appear  in  the  eyes  of  some  of  his  dupes  as  a 

charlatan.     Fears  began  to  rise  among  the  inves- 
Sedan    ^ors  as  to  the  safety  of  their  money.     There  was 

a  suspicion  that  beneath  the  pomp  and  show 
much  crookedness  lay  concealed,  and  much  quackery  beneath 
the  trumpeted,  miraculous  cures.  Elijah  III  was  not  slow  to 
hear  and  understand  the  significance  of  these  mutterings. 
Something  had  to  be  done  and  quickly,  to  check  the  waning  of 
his  influence.  He  must  perform  some  dazzling  feat,  and  re- 
establish himself  in  all  his  pristine  glory  in  the  faith  of  his 
people.  He  must  conquer  New  York  as  he  had  conquered 
Chicago,  and,  with  the  credulous  of  New  York  as  his  prize,  the 
world  would  be  his. 

Such,  as  you  probably  remember,  was  the  reasoning  of 
that  other  impostor,  Napoleon  III.  He  too,  observing  the  dis- 
satisfaction of  France,  felt  that  something  had  to  be  done  by 
him  to  dazzle  the  glory-loving  French.  And  so  he  declared 
war  against  Prussia — but,  instead  of  humbling  Bismarck  and 
elevating  himself,  he  only  prepared  his  Sedan.  And  such  a 
Sedan  Howie  prepared  for  himseif  in  New  York.  In  vain 
were  the  pompous  processions,  in  vain  the  exhibition  of  "  tro- 
phies "  of  converts  cured  by  miracle — crosses  made  of  hot- 
water  bags,  medicine-bottles  arranged  to  spell  the  word 
"drugs,"  decorations  composed  of  discarded  rosaries.  In 
vain  were  the  public  testimonials  of  marvellous  cures  effected, 
— one  woman  testifying  that  she  had  "  broken  three  vertebrae 
of  the  backbone  of  her  spine,"  and  had  been  cured  by  one  or 


two  prayers  of  the  divine  healer,  another  had  ' '  ten  cancers  in 
her  side"  cured  in  three  days,  while  another,  in  addition 
to  a  "  tumorous  cancer ' '  had  ' '  a  sort  of  misery  all  over 
that  doctors  couldn't  tell  what  it  was,  and  all  swelled  up." 
In  vain  was  his  abuse  of  newspapers,  and  his  display  of  tem- 
per. He  was  hissed  and  jeered  and  driven  as  a  mounte- 
bank off  the  stage,  out  of  Madison  Square  Garden,  out  of 
New  York,  back  to  Australia — probably  to  the  obscurity  whence 
he  started. 

I  know  that  my  judgment  of  Dowie  is  severe,  but  I  also 
know  that  it  is  not  a  hasty  judgment.     I  have  watched  and 
studied  the  man  and  his  movements  for  some  time, 
and,  even  with  the  most  charitable  inclinations,  I   ^r°ve.s  himself  a 

CfLIaCK* 

could  not  have  judged  otherwise  than  I  have. 
I  believe  him  to  be  a  self-centered  egoist,  a  shrewd  business 
man,  a  born  organizer,  one  who  is  conscious  of  his  magnetic 
powers,  especially  over  hysterical  women,  one  who  is  fond  of 
displaying  himself  theatrically,  aud  of  making  use  of  sensa- 
tional novelties  and  supernatural  pretension  for  the  purpose  of 
appeasing  his  inordinate  vanity,  and  amassing  great  power  and 
great  wealth. 

Yet,  it  is  possible  that  I  may  be  speaking  to  believers  in 
his  divine  powers,  who  may  ask,  and  with  good  reason:  "  Why 
may  he  not  be  a  prophet  ?  Have  there  not  been 

,-v,..  His  claim  to  being 

prophets  beiore?     Why  may  he  not  be  Elijah.''   prophet  "Elijah." 
Do  not  the  Scriptures  prophesy  the  return  of  the   "divine  healer" 

examined. 

seer  of  Carmel,  the  adversary  of  Ahab  and  Jeze- 
bel ?     Why  may  he  not  be  a  divine  healer  ?     Do  not  the  Scrip- 
tures tell  of  miraculous  cures  wrought  by  Elijah,  by  Jesus,  by 
the  Apostles,  and  others?" 

Such  questions  are  quite  right,  only  the  answer  to  them, 
to  be  satisfactory,  would  require  more  time  than  is  allotted  to  a 
Sunday  morning  discourse.  The  answers,  more- 
over,  to  be  satisfactorily  intelligent,  would  require 
as  a  prerequisite  on  the  part  of  the  hearer  consid- 
erable knowledge  of  higher  Bible  criticism.  He  must  know 
that  it  is  a  generally  accepted  truth  to-day  among  Bible 
students  that  the  Bible  has  its  facts  and  fancies,  its  histories 
and  legends,  as  might  well  be  expected  of  a  literature  as  old 


70 

as  the  Scriptures,  and  covering  so  vast  a  stretch  of  time  as 
that  over  which  it  extends.  Its  occurrences  passed  for  centu- 
ries through  the  mouth  of  tradition,  and,  when  finally  com- 
mitted to  writing,  were  often  quite  unlike  what  they  were 
when  they  first  happened.  The  more  popular  the  hero,  the 
more  were  his  doings  and  sayings  subject  to  ornamenta- 
tion by  poets  and  story-tellers.  The  further  back  we  go  in 
literature,  the  more  we  find  the  heroes  aureoled  with  the  super- 
natural. How  prone  we  are  even  this  day  to  give  free  rein  to 
fancy  when  speaking  or  thinking  of  our  popular  idols!  How 
prone  we  are  to  idealize  our  parents  and  teachers,  our  heroes 
and  reformers,  when  time  has  somewhat  faded  the  vividness  of 
reality?  How  much  of  what  is  told  of  Napoleon,  of  Wash- 
ington, of  Lincoln  is  apocryphal  ? 

The  prophets  of  the  Bible  were  God-inspired  men,  but 
their  powers  were  never  more  than  human.  They  were 
Teaching  of  Bible  speakers,  writers,  agitators,  reformers,  but  never 
concerning  pro-  professional  wonder-workers.  In  their  early 
stages  they  somewhat  shared  the  ecstatic  nature 
of  the  seers  and  soothsayers  of  the  surrounding  nations.  But 
from  that  stage  they  speedily  passed  into  men  of  profound 
acumen  and  spiritual  insight;  men  of  remarkable  indepen- 
dence and  heroic  courage;  men  who  served  their  God  more 
than  their  king,  and  loved  their  country  better  than  them- 
selves; men  who  denounced  the  wickedness  of  mightiest  kings 
or  most  powerful  hierarchies  to  their  very  face;  men,  who, 
reading  the  signs  of  the  times  and  reasoning  upon  their  logi- 
cal consequences,  never  failed  their  people,  when  the  nation  was 
to  be  protected  against  dangerous  political  alliances  or  against 
moral  or  idolatrous  corruptions;  men,  wTho,  when  their  public 
message  was  delivered  or  their  public  work  done,  returned  to 
their  mountain  cave,  or  to  their  plow  or  vineyard  or  flock, 
and,  clad  in  the  crudest  garments,  living  on  the  simplest 
food,  they  spent  their  days  in  honest  toil,  and  their  leisure  in 
contemplation  or  dreaming  of  that  blessed  age,  when  a  world- 
wide brotherhood  of  man  would  worship  amid  universal  peace 
and  love  the  One  God  of  Righteousness. 

Contrast  one  of  these  unworldly  prophets  of  old  with 
Uowic,  the  canny  Scotchman  of  our  day,  contrast  one  of  these 


public  consciences  of  old,    gaunt,   rustic,  stern,    Bjbljca|  prophet 
emaciated,  his  long,  wild  hair  descending  upon   and  Dowie  con- 
naked,  brawny   shoulder,   attired  in    mantle    of  trasted- 
sheep-skin    or    hair-cloth,    contrast    him    with   Dowie,    slick, 
portly,  weighing  some  two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds,  travel- 
ling in  drawing-rooms  of  Pullman  cars,  owning  his  equipage, 
occupying  choicest  suites  in  choicest  hotels,  living  on  the  fat  of 
the  land,  exhibiting  himself  in  showy  wardrobes,  constantly 
raking  in  the  shekels,  and  counting  several  millions  of  them  as 
his  own,  and  if,  after  such  a  comparison,  you  are  still  a  believer 
in  the  prophetism  of  Dowie, — may  God  help  your  credulity. 

What  of  the  second  question,  ' '  Why  may  he  not  be  Elijah  ? 
Do  not  the  Scriptures  prophesy  the  return  of  Elijah,  the  Tish- 
bite?"  So  also  do  the  legends  prophesy  the  re- 
turn  of  Charlemagne,  Barbarossa,  King  Arthur, 
and  a  dozen  other  popular  heroes.  So  did  the 
ancients  prophesy  the  return  of  the  sun-gods  Apollo,  Adonis, 
Osiris,  and  others,  in  the  spring  of  the  year.  In  the  Scrip- 
tural narrative  of  the  life  and  deeds  of  Elijah  we  have  a  curi- 
ous blending  of  a  popular  hero  and  of  an  ancient  sun-god. 
The  prophet's  mighty  personality  and  heroic  achievements  had 
seized  upon  the  fancy  of  the  people,  and  had  clustered  about 
him  no  end  of  legends.  They  could  not  think  of  him  as  dead. 
Like  the  sun-gods  of  the  heathens,  he  ascended  in  his  fiery 
chariot,  and,  like  them,  lie  would  return  in  the  spring-tide  of 
Israel's  reviving  glory,  \vith  freedom  on  his  wings,  with  mes- 
sianic seed  in  his  hand.  What  was  first  a  mere  legend  of  the 
story-teller,  became  later  a  figure  of  speech  with  the  poet,  and 
finally,  during  the  storm  and  stress  period  of  Israel's  history, 
a  favorite  belief.  As  such  it  flourished  in  the  clays  of  John, 
the  Baptist,  the  people  hailing  the  hermit  of  the  Jordan  as  the 
Elijah,  who  had  returned  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  coming 
of  the  Messiah. 

The  world-redeeming  Messiah,  however,  having  failed  to 
come,  John  Alexander  Dowie,  he  of  foul  tongue,  and  of  un- 
controllable temper,  undertook,  in  the  goodness 
of  his  heart,  to  prepare  the  way,  for  the   third   Elljah  "^J^. 
and  last  time,  for  the  coming  of  the  Messiah,  for 
the  coming  of  the   meek  and   gentle,  of  the   patient  and  for- 


72 

bearing,  for  him  who  returns  good  for  evil,  and  blesses  them 
that  curse.  What  a  farce  to  mention  Elijah  and  Dowie  in  the 
same  breath!  Picture  to  yourselves  the  former  braving  the 
mighty  Ahab  and  the  wicked  Jezebel,  running  like  the  wind 
in  front  of  the  king's  chariot,  and  not  letting  go  till  dire 
vengeance  had  overtaken  the  royal  house  for  its  cruel  mur- 
ders and  outrages, — and  then  picture  to  yourselves  Dowie, 
carefully  barbered  and  perfumed,  with  patent-leather  shoes 
and  French  kid  gloves,  with  broad  cloth  of  latest  cut  on  his 
back,  puffing,  under  the  weight  of  his  two  hundred  and  fifty 
pounds  of  flesh  and  fat,  in  front  of  some  magnate's  carriage, 
bidding  him  return  his  ill-gotten  gain.  Might  not  the  lesser 
magnate  say  to  the  greater  "  What  thou  wouldst  have  me  do, 
that  do  thou  first?" 

As  to  the  third  question  "Why  may  Dowie  not  be  a 
divine  healer  ?  Do  not  the  Scriptures  tell  of  miraculous  cures 
Teaching  of  wrought  by  Elijah,  Jesus,  the  apostles,  and 

science  concern-  others?"  That  cures  are  effected  every  day 
ing  Faith-cure.  witilout  physicians  and  drugs,  with  and  without 
prayers,  we  know.  Nature  is  a  greater  miracle-worker  than 
any  prophet  of  whom  we  have  ever  heard  or  read.  It  has 
wrought  infinitely  more  cures,  and  better  cures,  than  physi- 
cians have  ever  dreamed.  Many  diseases  are  self-limited, 
and,  under  ordinary  circumstances,  if  the  patient  be  cheered 
and  encouraged,  health  will  return.  When  the  blood  of  the 
child  is  filled  with  the  diptheria  toxin,  nature  sets  itself  to 
work  to  create  the  anti-toxin.  If  the  child's  vitality  preced- 
ing' the  attack  be  normal,  nature's  medicine  will  conquer  the 
diptheretic  poison. 

Imagination  plays  a  great  part  in  certain  diseases.  We 
kno\v  that  healthy  people  have  worried  themselves  into  sick- 
ness, by  being  repeatedly  told  by  diverse  people, 
Faitii-c-jres  ef-  hoax,  that  they  looked  ill.  Even  so  have 

fected  by  mothers.  J 

certain  ill  persons  been  cheered  and  soothed  and 
prayed  into  health.  How  many  miraculous  cures  have  not 
mothers  wrought  in  nurseries!  How  many  children's  ailments 
have  not  been  chased  from  the  cradle's  side  by  a  mother's 
soothing  stroke  of  hand  or  loving  embrace,  by  a  mother's 
cheering  word  or  affectionate  kiss  or  fervent  prayer!  How 


73 

many  fretful,  painful  hours  have  not  been  lulled   and  rocked 
into  oblivion  by  a  mother's  sweet  lullaby! 

And  what  has  been  and  is  the  proud  achievement  of 
mothers,  has  been  and  is  the  miracle  of  ministers.  The  world 
is  full  of  patients  suffering  from  mental  strain,  c  ... 

ralln-CurCS     *!• 

from  over-wrought  imagination,  from  hallucina-  fected  by  minis- 
tion  and  delusion,  from  shock  and  fear.  It  is  to  ters< 
these  that  the  spiritual  minister  is  a  physician  for  the  soul, 
cheering  them  into  hope,  and  courage  and  healthful  activity, 
by  the  gentle  touch  and  tone  of  sympathy,  by  the  sweet  promise 
of  a  better  day  coming,  by  the  confidence  in  God  and  in  prayer 
restored.  Ministers  of  God,  who  are  beloved,  and  who  are 
believed  in  for  their  kindness  and  sincerity,  and  revered  for 
their  spirituality,  have  effected  cures  such  as  have  baffled 
skilled  physicians,  cures  such  as  are  recorded  of  Scriptural 
heroes,  cures  which  have  stimulated  paralyzed  nerve-centres  and 
blood-centres,  which  have  revived  drooping  spirits,  reanimated 
suspended  functions,  made  the  crooked  straight,  the  weak 
strong,  the  diseased  healthy. 

Hence  there  is  nothing  miraculous  in  Bowie's  "miracle- 
cures,"  nor  anything  strange  in  having  been  especially  success- 
ful with  certain  kinds  of  hysteria  patients.   And,    Nothjng  superna. 
for  having  thus  benefited  hundreds  of  patients,   turai  in  Dowie's 
we  would  have  had  nothing  but  praise,  had  he 
contented  himself  with  the  truth,  and  had  he  attributed  his 
cures  to  well-known  psychic  phenomena. 

But,  when  he  condemns  the  whole  of  medical  science, 
and  when  he  brands  all  physicians  as  menials  of  the  devil, 
and  all  drugs  as  poison,  when  he  offers  his  Chris- 

A  quack  when  of- 

tian   Catholic   Church  of  Zion,  with  himself  as   fers  self  and  pray- 
Chief  of  Staff,  as  cure-all  for  all  diseases,  he  for-    eras  substitute  for 

medical  science 

feits  every  claim  to  serious  consideration.  When 
he  would  have  us  believe  that  the  eternal  and  immutable  laws 
of  nature  can  be  set  aside  by  a  prayer  of  his,  by  but  a  "  laying 
on  "  of  his  hand,  when  lie  would  have  us  believe  that  the  deadly 
bacilli  of  tuberculosis,  yellow  fever,  scarlet-fever,  malaria, 
typhoid,  diptheria,  small-pox,  can  be  driven  out  of  the  human 
system  at  his  mere  command,  we  know  that  we  are  deal- 
ing with  a  quack.  He  publishes  testimonials  such  as  this: 


74 

I  fell  off  a  horse,  and  broke  a  bone,  my  right  leg  swelled  and 
festered  and  would  not  heal;  physicians  advised  an  operation, 
but  mother  would  not  consent;  disease  spread  to  other  parts 
of  my  body,  and  affected  all  my  joints;  was  taken  to  the 
Divine  Healer;  he  prayed  with  me  and  I  walked  away  cured; 
or  when  he  publishes  a  testimonial  of  equal  tenor  of  a  cure  of 
pneumonia,  appendicitis,  inflammatory  rheumatism.  Again 
he  publishes,  in  great  detail,  the  case  of  a  young  man,  very 
ill  for  years,  operated  upon  at  a  hospital  in  Chicago,  given  up 
by  the  surgeons,  taken  in  the  hospital  ambulance  to  Bowie's 
house,  the  ambulance  consuming  four  hours  on  the  journey, 
lest  the  patient  die  on  the  way  by  reason  of  fast  driving,  car- 
ried tip-stairs,  cured  by  prayer  in  three  minutes,  walking  down- 
stairs by  himself  and  partaking  af  a  hearty  dinner  at  Bowie's 
table.  P\irtherhe  publishes  a  letter  such  as  this,  received  from 
Summit,  South  Bakotah,  "  Bear  Overseer-at-Large:  I  am  glad 
that  God  has  furnished  His  people  a  place  of  refuge  to  go  to 
or  to  write  to  in  time  of  trouble.  ~M.y  horse  seemed  to  get 
better  from  the  time  I  sent  the  letter  requesting  you  to  pray 
for  him.  I  believe  he  is  just  as  sound  as  he  was  before  he  was 
sick.  I  owe  God  all  the  glory,  and  thank  you  for  your 
prayers,"  (Leaves  of  Healing,  Sept.  21,  1901).  When  he 
spreads  broadcast  such  testimonials  as  these,  it  seems  that  the 
authorities  ought  to  step  in,  and  check  the  mischief  which 
they  are  sure  to  do. 

There  is  an  increasing  number  of  patients  refusing  or  be- 
ing denied  medical  aid  in  serious  illness,  suffering  agonies  be- 
Si'ch  trci-e-v  ^ore  succumbing  to  death  on  account  of  having 
dangerous  and  their  cases  submitted  to  Bowieism  instead  of  treat- 
ment by  some  skilled  physician.  It  was  but  re- 
cently that  we  read  of  a  young  woman  suffering  with  gastritis, 
crying  for  the  aid  of  a  physician,  but  his  services  refused  by  her 
mother  on  the  ground  that  ' '  God  would  be  angry  at  such  a  man- 
ifestation  of  distrust."  Friends  of  the  girl  at  last  succeeded  in 
forcing  a  physician  into  the  house.  It  was  too  late;  the  girl 
died.  Manslaughter  was  committed  in  denying  to  the  patient 
the  benefits  of  medical  care,  and,  in  the  light  of  the  spread  of 
this  I'aith-cure  quackery,  the  legislatures  of  each  state  ought 
to  make  denial  or  refusal  of  medical  aid,  when  wanted  and 


75 

needed,  a  penal  offense.  If  our  authorities  have  a  right  to 
hold  penally  responsible  every  man  who  prescribes  medicine 
without  possessing  a  diploma  from  a  recognized  medical  col- 
lege, they  have  no  less  a  right  to  hold  those  penally  responsible 
who  undertake  to  treat  dangerous  maladies  by  prayers,  incanta- 
tions, laying  on  of  hands,  or  other  means  of  modern  witchcraft. 
There  is  a  phase  of  Dowieism  that  is  ludicrous;  there  is  how- 
ever another  phase  of  it  that  is  a  most  dangerous  form  of 
quackery. 

There  is  one  question  that  has  not   yet  been  answered: 
What  makes  such  a  phenomenon  as  Dowieism  possible  in  an 
age  that  is  as  permeated  with  science  as  ours.    His  sfrong  fo||ow- 
The  question  is  a  large  one,  and  well  merits  sep-   ing  traceable  to 
arate  treatment.     We  shall,  therefore,  devote  our  MYSTICISM- 
next  discourse  to  a  discussion  of   the  subject  of   Mysticism, 
which  lies  at  the  root  of  many  of  those  aberrations  that  for- 
ever lead  men  into  unexplored  regions,  which  loosen  the  bands 
of  reason  and  give  unrestricted  s\vay  to  the  emotions  and  the 
imaginations. 


of 

VIII— MYSTICISM. 


A  SUNDAY  DISCOURSE 

BEFORE    THE 

REFORM  CONGREGATION  KENESETH  ISRAEL, 

BT 

RABBI  JOSEPH  KRAXJSKOPF,  D.  D. 

Philadelphia,  April  i7th,  iqo4. 


Text :  "  The  secret  things  belong  unto  Jehovah  our  God  ;  but  the  things  that  are 
revealed  belong  unto  us."    DEUT.  xxix,  29. 

SCRIPTURAL  WESSON  :  EZEKIEL  xxxvii,  1-14. 


A  busy  place  is  the  city  of  Chicago.  Its  marts  and 
squares  and  streets  fairly  pant  with  the  race  of  life.  Hourly, 
hundreds  of  trains  rush  breathlessly  to  its  gates  Chjcago  teemjng 
from  the  remotest  parts  of  the  laud;  and  daily  with  twentieth  cen- 
the  broad  waters  of  Lake  Michigan  carry  to  its  ury  splrlt' 
shores  mighty  vessels,  laden  with  produce  of  the  North  and 
West.  The  spirit  of  the  twentieth  century  moves  over  the 
metropolis  of  the  West  as  moved  '  '  the  spirit  of  God  over  the' 
face  of  the  waters"  at  the  beginning  of  time.  Scarcely  a 
sign  of  the  old  is  observable  there.  Its  shops  and  factories 
are  of  the  newest,  its  schools  and  universities  of  the  latest, 
its  teachers  and  preachers,  of  the  most  progressive.  Vast  as  is 
our  land,  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  from  the  blustery 
North  to  the  sunny  South,  it  knows  of  no  better  illustration 
of  the  wide-awake,  enterprising,  prosperous  American  spirit 
than  is  afforded  by  the  city  of  Chicago. 

And  yet,  that  very  city,  as  we  saw  in  our  discourse  of 
Sunday  last,  was  the  centre  of  Dowie's  activities  during  the 
past  ten  years.  In  that  city  thousands  crowded, 


to  worship  at  the  feet  of  one  who  styled  himself        ™nr*  of  Do"' 

-1-  ItllMn. 

Elijah  III,    John  the  Baptist   II,  the  Prophet, 

the  Latter-Day   Messiah,   the  Divine    Healer.      In    that   city 

thousands  came  to  the  Divine   Healing  establishment  to   be 


78 

cured,  by  prayer  and  by  "laying  on"  of  hands,  of  diseases 
pronounced  incurable  by  able  physicians,  and  went  away  with 
loud  acclaims  of  the  Divine  Healer.  In  that  city  thousands 
invested  almost  their  all  to  further  the  various  schemes  of  the 
Latter-day  Messiah,  and  to-day  they  wonder  whether  he  or 
any  of  their  money  in  his  possession  will  ever  return  to  them. 
Many  have  been  mystified  by  that  strange  mental  phe- 
nomenon that  Chicago  presented  to  the  world  during  the 
past  decade.  Many  have  been  at  a  loss  to  recon- 
cile  its  intense  materialism  with  its  blind  credul- 
ity, its  modernness  with  its  musty  medisevalism. 
And  some  have  ventured  upon  explanations,  have  charged  it 
to  the  spirit  of  adventure  and  humbug,  more  especially  to  the 
illiteracy  that  is  supposed  to  predominate  in  the  West.  Some 
have  claimed  that  such  a  movement  as  that  of  Dowie  would  be 
impossible  in  the  East,  and,  in  proof,  have  cited  his  recent  ig- 
nominious rout  in  New  York. 

The  explanation,  however,  has  explained  nothing.     On 

the  contrary,  it  has  but  deepened  the  mystery.      For,  if  Dow- 

ieism  be  attributable  to  Western  illiteracy,  what 

what  of   Eastern   of  t|ie   recru(jescence  of  mediaeval  mysticism  in 

mysticism  ? 

the  conservative  and  cultured  East?  Boston, 
the  so-called  hub  of  American  culture,  is  honey-combed  with 
the  strangest  sorts  of  fads.  The  most  outlandish  societies, 
holding  the  most  outlandish  creeds,  have  their  headquarters 
there:  Bahaism,  Esoteric  Buddhism, Theosophy, Occult  Science, 
Astral  Science,  Christian  Science,  Electral  Therapeutics, 
Psycho-Therapeutics,  and  whatever  else  their  names  may  be. 
Mrs.  Eddy  is  of  the  East,  and  her  new  gospel  of  Christian 
Science  went  forth  into  the  world  from  the  New  England 
Slates,  whence  also  came  the  founder  of  Mormonism.  The 
city  of  New  York  recently  built  a  Christian  Science  church, 
at  a  cost  of  a  million  dollars,  and  it  was  Boston  that,  upon 
completing  its  Mother  Christian  Science  Church,  offered  the 
deed  of  the  same  to  Mrs.  Eddy,  graven  on  a  solid  golden 
scroll.  In  our  own  city,  Henry  Seybert,  an  enthusiastic  be- 
liever in  spiritualism,  bequeathed  the  sum  of  one  hundred 
thoiisand  dollars,  for  the  purpose  of  having  the  truths  of 
modern  spiritualism  investigated,  of  which  he  had  been  made 


79 

positive  by  diverse  table-movings  and  table-rappings,  and  by 
spirit-appearances  within  cabinets  of  mediums.  A  Dowieite 
church  was  founded  in  this  city  on  Sunday  last  with  two  hun- 
dred members. 

We  marvel  at  the  credulity  of  the  West  that  permits  itself 
to  be  tricked  and  fleeced  by  a  canny  Scotchman.  What  of 
the  Eastern  folks  that  were  tricked  and  fleeced  Madame  B|avats. 
by  Madame  Blavatsky  ?  Is  not  the  story  of  this  ky's  hypnotization 
Russian  adventuress  yet  more  remarkable  than  of  the  East 
that  of  Dowie,  considering  the  superior  class  of  people  she 
succeeded  in  mystifying?  Marrying  at  seventeen,  she  deserted 
her  husband  soon  after  marriage,  and  roamed  as  an  adven- 
turess through  the  world.  When  she  reappeared,  she  came 
freighted  with  a  mystic  jargon,  borrowed  from  Indian  adepts, 
Tibetan  priests,  Egyptian  thaumaturgists,  and  from  American 
Indian  medicine-men,  and  with  it  she  awed  the  credulous  and 
hypnotized  the  emotional.  She  held  seances,  in  which  she 
had  revelations  from  the  yonder  world  through  the  agency  of 
spirits,  who  made  their  presence  manifest  by  all  sorts  of  rap- 
pings  on  pots,  pans,  beds,  tables,  chairs,  and  what  not.  By 
means  of  such  seances,  she  captured  the  belief  of  thousands, 
among  them  a  personage  no  less  distinguished  than  Col.  Olcott, 
with  whose  aid  she  founded  the  Theosophical  Society  of  New 
York.  She  migrated  with  her  convert  to  India,  where  she  es- 
tablished a  shrine,  within  which  she  performed  marvellous 
deeds  of  clairvoyance,  answering  all  sorts  of  questions  and 
revealing  all  sorts  of  secrets.  Theosophical  societies  sprang 
up  everywhere,  and  almost  divine  honors  were  shown  Madame 
Blavatsky  as  "  Priestess  of  Isis." 

But  gradually  trouble  arose.  Confederates  published  to 
the  world  the  tricks  by  which  she  worked  her  miracles. 
Driven  at  last  to  confession  by  exposure,  the  following  has 
been  given  as  her  statement:  "What  is  one  to  do,  when  in 
order  to  rule  men  it  is  necessary  to  deceive  them ;  when  their 
very  stupidity  invites  trickery,  for  almost  invariably  the  more 
simple,  the  more  silly,  and  the  more  gross  the  phenomenon, 
the  more  likely  it  is  to  succeed  ?"* 


Prof.  Joseph  Jastrow,  "  Fact  and  Fable  in  Psychology." 


8o 

And  what  shall  we  say  or  think  of  the  remarkable  power 
that  Mrs.  Eddy's  Christian  Science  has  acquired  over  Eastern 
What  of  Mrs.  Ed-  folks  ?  Here  is  a  movement  but  thirty-eight 
dy's  Christian  vears  old,  and  yet  it  counts  to-day  over  a  million 

Science  ? 

followers,  numbers  more  than  seven  hundred 
churches,  and  lays  claim  to  having  cured,  by  faith,  some  two 
millions  of  patients,  not  only  of  nervous  troubles  but  also  of 
fatal  fevers,  cancers  and  contagions. 

Its  tenets  are  contained  in  a  book,  entitled  "  Science  and 
Health,  with  Key  to  the  Scriptures''  written  by  Mrs.  Eddy, 

professedly    under    divine    inspiration,    and    of 
Its  Bible. 

which  book  she  has  sold  some  295,000  copies. 

Of  its  religious  creed  we  shall  not  speak.  The  American  people 
respect  every  religion  and  assure  religious  liberty  to  all.  But 
we  have  a  right  to  speak  of  its  sanitary  teaching,  for  that 
affects  the  public  health. 

Mrs.  Eddy  characterizes  physicians  as  false  teachers.   She 

charges  them  with  relying  on  drugs  instead  of  on  faith,  with 

treating  diseases  when  what  is  termed  "disease  " 

its  sanitary  teach-  has  nQ  existence     There  is  no  matter,  she  claims, 

all  is  mind,  and,  there  being  no  matter,  there  can 
be  no  material  or  bodily  ailing.  Physical  disease  is  a  mental 
ailment,  she  says,  and  prescribing  medicine  for  it  is  as  absurd 
as  prescribing  for  a  blush.  When  patients  locate  diseases, 
such  as  pneumonia,  cancer,  consumption,  colic,  fractured  bone, 
dislocated  joint,  in  different  parts  of  the  body,  they  suffer 
from  delusion.  The  disease  exists  in  the  imagination  of  the 
mind.  Cure  the  mind,  and  you  have  cured  the  disease.  "We 
weep  because  others  weep,  we  yawn  because  they  yawn,  and 
we  have  small-pox  because  others  have  it;  but  mortal  mind, 
not  matter  contains  and  carries  the  infection."  "  You  say  a 
boil  is  painful;  but  that  is  impossible,  for  matter  without  mind 
is  not  painful.  The  boil  simply  manifests  your  belief  in  pain, 
through  inflammation  and  swelling,  and  you  call  this  belief  a 
boil.  Now,  administer  mentally  to  your  patient  a  high  attenu- 
ation of  truth  on  this  subject,  and  it  will  soon  cure  the  boil." 
Healing,  she  says,  may  be  accomplished  by  the  most  ignorant 
person,  without  the  slightest  knowledge  of  anatomy,  provided 
the  heart  is  sufficiently  pure,  and  faith  sufficiently  fervent. 


8i 

"I  have  always  advised  my  people,"  she  says,  "not  to  read 
works  in  advocacy  of  a  materialistic  treatment  of  disease,  be- 
cause they  becloud  the  science  of  metaphysical  healing."  A 
Christian  Scientist  never  gives  medicine,  never  recommends 
hygiene.  Anatomy,  physiology,  treatises  on  health  are  but 
promoters  of  disease.  "  If  exposure  to  a  draught  of  air  while 
in  a  state  of  perspiration  is  followed  by  chills,  dry  cough,  in- 
fluenza, congestive  symptoms  in  the  lungs,  or  hints  of  inflam- 
matory rheumatism,  your  Mind-remedy  is  safe  and  sure.  If 
you  are  a  Christian  Scientist,  such  symptoms  will  not  follow 
from  the  exposure."  "Bathing  and  rubbing  to  alter  the 
secretions  or  remove  unhealthy  exhalation  from  the  cuticle 
receive  a  useful  rebuke  from  Christian  healing. "  "  The  daily 
ablution  of  an  infant  is  not  more  natural  or  necessary  than  to 
take  a  fresh  fish  out  of  water  and  cover  it  with  dirt  once  a 
day,  that  it  may  thrive  better  in  its  natural  element."  Exer- 
cise, according  to  Christian  Science,  is  of  no  value.  "  Because 
the  muscle  of  the  blacksmith's  arm  is  strongly  developed,  it 
does  not  follow  that  exercise  did  it.  ...  The  trip  hammer  is 
not  increased  in  size  by  exercise;  why  not,  since  muscles  are 
as  material  as  wood  and  iron  ?"  "  To  prevent  disease  or  cure 
it  mentally  let  spirit  destroy  the  dream  of  sense."  "If  you 
wish  to  heal  by  argument,  find  the  type  of  the  ailment,  and 
array  your  mental  plea  against  the  physical.  Argue  with  the 
patient  (mentally,  not  audibly)  that  he  has  no  disease." 
"  Mentally  insist  that  health  is  the  everlasting  fact,  and  sick- 
ness the  temporal  falsity."  "My  publications  alone  heal 
more  sickness  than  an  unconscientious  student  can  begin  to 
reach."  "I  am  never  mistaken  in  my  scientific  diagnosis 
of  disease."  "  Outside  of  Christian  Science  all  is  vague  and 
hypothetical,  the  opposite  of  Truth."  "  Outside  of  Christian 
Science  all  is  error." 

Such  are  some  of  the  teachings  of  Christian  Science,  and 
these  its  founder  and  well-nigh  worshipped  prophetess  teaches 
with  a  disdain  of  logic,  and  with  a  disregard  of 

...  Its  perniciousneis. 

empirical  science  that  would   have  been  exceed- 
ingly ludicrous,  were  not  the  consequences  often  exceedingly 
disastrous.     While  it  is  true,  that,  according  to  well-known 
physical  and  psychical  laws,  pointed  out  in  our  last  discourse, 


82 

many  patients  are  cured  by  it  of  nervous  disorders,  even  of 
certain  organic  and  functional  troubles,  hundreds  of  others 
have  been  made  to  suffer  excruciating  tortures,  and  have  been 
hurried  into  untimely  graves,  because  medical  aid  was  refused 
by  them  or  denied  them.  Patients  have  suffered  agonies,  to 
whom  the  administration  of  anaesthetics  might  have  brought 
relief;  patients  have  been  crippled  for  life,  whom  a  slight  and 
needed  operation  might  have  made  well  and  sound.  Conta- 
gious disease  has  been  permitted  to  spread,  and  to  reap  rich 
harvests  of  death,  because  of  Christian  Science's  teaching  that 
small-pox,  for  instance,  is  a  mere  delusion  of  the  mind  and 
not  an  infectious  disease  of  the  body.  I  have  read  of  a 
patient,  who  had  lost  his  eye-sight  by  reason  of  a  cataract, 
which  cataract  dozens  of  hysterical  women  had  tried  in  vain 
to  "pray  "  away  or  to  "  think  "  away,  but  which  the  knife 
of  a  skilled  oculist  might  easily  have  removed  in  a  few  seconds. 
Were  a  rabid  dog  to  bury  his  teeth  into  your  flesh,  you  would 
be  expected,  as  a  Christian  Scientist,  to  believe  that  poison  can 
never  attack  a  believing  mind,  and  think  no  more  about  it. 
Were  you,  however,  to  proceed  to  have  the  wound  cauterized, 
or  were  you  to  proceed  for  treatment  to  some  Pasteur  Insti- 
tute, you  would  be  denounced  as  an  unbeliever.  Were  you  to 
meet  with  a  railroad  accident,  and  lie  pinned  under  the  wreck- 
age, your  duty,  as  a  Christian  Scientist,  would  simply  be  to  be- 
lieve that  there  is  no  wreck,  that  no  heavy  timbers  crush  your 
body  nor  raging  flames  burn  you  alive,  and  every  move  on 
your  part  to  free  yourself,  and  every  cry  for  help,  would  be 
wasted  effort  and  want  of  faith,  and  but  an  encouragement  to 
the  mischievous  medical  profession. 

Medical  science  has  well-nigh  conquered  pain,  has  well- 
nigh  stayed  the  ravages  of  plagues  and  epidemics  and  conta- 
gions that  in  former  ages  decimated  the  popula- 
tion  of  the  earth >  Jt  has  vastly  diminished  the  pro- 
tracted sicknesses  of  former  days;  it  has  taught 
us  how  to  guard  against  illness,  and  how  to  increase  our  hap- 
piness and  usefulness;  it  has  rid  us  of  much  of  the  tyrannous 
superstitions  and  whichcrafts  and  priestcrafts,  which  the  fear 
and  pain  of  disease  inflicted  upon  our  ancestors, — and,  in  re- 
turn for  all  this  good,  it  is  called  "  evil  "  by  people  who  call 


83 

themselves   Christian  Scientists, — probably  because  they  know 
as  little  of  Christianity  as  they  know  of  Science. 

I  want  to  be  chivalrous  toward  Mrs.  Eddy,  and  charitable 
enough  to  believe  that  she  is  an  ecstatic  mystic,  a  self-deluded 
pietist,  and  that  she  knows  just  enough  of  science 
and  Scriptures  to  prove  the  truth  of  the  old  scriptures" 
adage  "  a  little  knowledge  is  a  dangerous  thing."  disproved  by  Scrip- 
Otherwise,  I  cannot  see  how  she  could  ever  have 
written  her  book  on  "  Science  and  Health,"  or  have  pretended 
to  have  furnished  the  key  to  a  proper  interpretation  of  the 
Scriptures,  when  the  Bible  itself  speaks  of  medicines,  com- 
manded and  prescribed,  and  of  cures  effected  by  them.  Moses 
enjoins  a  sanitary  code;  he  secludes  and  treats  the  leper;  he 
prohibits  the  eating  of  animals  that  had  died  of  disease.  Isaiah 
treats  King  Hezekiah  in  his  sickness.  Ezekiel  speaks  of  a 
tree  whose  fruit  is  good  for  food  and  whose  leaves  are  good 
for  healing.  We  read  of  the  balm  of  Gilead.  "A  merry 
heart  doth  good  like  medicine,"  says  the  author  of  the  Book 
of  Proverbs.  Medicinal  effects  of  spirituous  liquors  are  known. 
The  Samaritan  anoints  with  oil  and  wine  the  wound  of  the  man 
attacked  by  thieves.  Jesus  speaks  of  the  sick  that  need  a  physi- 
cian. When  he  cures  without  medicine,  it  is  when  medicine 
is  not  wanted,  as  is  done  by  physicians  now.  When  he  drives 
out  evil  spirits,  he  but  expels  spectres  of  the  imagination, 
and  when  he  awakens  patients  out  of  trances,  or  makes  the 
blind  to  see  and  the  lame  to  walk,  it  is  his  awe-inspiring  pres- 
ence, the  hypnotic  power  of  the  revered,  that  vitalizes  and  en- 
ergizes and  soothes  nervous  disorders. 

To  return  to  Mrs,  Eddy,  if  a  mystic  she  be,  she  is  not  one 
of  the  ordinary  type.  Her  head  may  be  in  the  clouds,  but 
her  feet  are  on  solid  ground.  She  knows  how  to 
write  a  selling  book,  at  $3.15  a  copy,  at  a  time 
when  whatever  is  mystic  is  seized  upon  with 
avidity  by  large  numbers  of  people.  She  is  earthly  enough 
to  copy-right  her  creed,  and  knows  how  to  do  a  profitable  busi- 
ness with  souvenir  spoons.  She  knows  how  to  impress  and 
awe,  how  to  create  around  her  residence,  at  Concord,  N.  H.  a 
sort  of  spiritual  court,  how  to  keep  her  votaries  at  arm's  length 
so  as  not  to  hold  herself  too  cheap.  She  is  alert  to  take  ad- 


84 

vantage  of  every  '  '  miracle  '  '  wrought  by  her  sect,  and  knows 
the  art  of  silence,  when  failure  follows  attempts  of  Christian 
Science  cures. 

But,  with  all  the  semi-divinity  that  hedges  her  in,  and  with 
all  her  success,  she  is  quite  modest  and  sane,  compared  with 
many  of  the  other  mystics,  and  other  systems  of 


A"d  '      "drugless  healing"  that  infest  the  East.'     Pro- 


hsts 

bably  attracted  by  the  financial  success  of  Dowie, 

or  the  homage  shown  to  Mrs.  Eddy,  there  have  sprung  up  a 
host  of  "divine"  or  "psychic"  healers.  There  is  the  Mind 
Curist,  the  Viticulturist,  the  Phrenopathist,  the  Esoteric  Vibra- 
tionist,  the  Psychic  Scientist.  There  is  the  Metaphysical 
Healer,  the  Astrological  Health  Guide.  There  is  the  Medical 
Clairvoyant,  who,  by  "  concentrated  introspection,"  can  reveal 
the  hidden  better  than  the  X-ray  or  the  newly  discovered 
radium.  There  are  healers,  who  cure  disease  by  focusing 
"  magnetic  atmospheric  rays  "  upon  their  patients,  using  them- 
selves as  lenses.  There  are  those,  who  radiate  healing  rays 
from  themselves  to  the  remotest  parts  of  the  world,  even  as  the 
sun  sends  rays  of  light  and  warmth  to  the  ends  of  the  earth. 
And  it  goes  without  saying  that  a  goodly  fee  is  paid  for  such 
miracle-cures,  and  a  goodly  price  for  the  literature  containing 
the  "divinely  revealed  truths." 

I  believe,  I  have  said  sufficiently  to  have  prompted  long 

before  this  the  question:   "How  is  it  that  such  ecstasies  or 

aberrations  or  eccentricities  or  deceptions  find  so 

J'ity  St'rui«s    ^arSe  anc^  so  credulous  a  following  in  an  age  as 

permeated  with  science  as  ours?"     Would  you 

know  the  answer,  ask  your  physician,  your  lawyer,  your  drug- 

gist, ask  some  professor  of  psychology  or  logic,  some  scientist 

or  alienist,  and  let  them  tell  you  of  the  credulity  of  people.  Let 

them  tell   you   how  full  the  world  is  still  of  people  to  whom 

logic  and  science  prove  nothing,  to  whom  the  exception  abro- 

gates instead  of  proves  the  rule,  to  whom  pot-  and  pan-rap- 

pings  in  dark  and  secret  cabinets  convey  more  revelations  than 

scientific  tests  and  proofs  in  the  broad  day-light  of  laboratories. 

There  are  minds  that  are  as  insensible  of  certain  truths  as 
there  are  eyes  that  are  insensible  of  certain  colors.  There  are 


85 

congenital  brain  diseases  as  there  are  congenital 

,  .        , .  , ,  ,  .    ,          .          ,  The  more  impossl 

nip  diseases,   that  need   straightening   by  some   bie  a  creed  the 

Prof.  Lorenz.     There  are  minds  that  are  as  ore-  more  believed  in  by 

,.  «  .    .  mystics. 

disposed  to  mysticisms  as  there  are  systems 
predisposed  to  consumption  and  cancer.  There  are  minds 
that  are  as  fascinated  by  mysticism  as  the  bird  is  charmed 
by  the  serpent's  fatal  eye.  There  are  minds  that  are  driven 
by  disease  or  bereavement,  off  the  beaten  paths  of  knowledge 
into  dark  and  crooked  by-ways,  which  often  lead  into  the 
abysses  of  madness.  The  mind,  in  such  morbid,  pathological 
states,  says  with  Tertullian  of  old  "  Credo,  quia  impossibile" 
"  1 'believe,  because  it  is  impossible"  or  with  St.  Theresa  "the 
more  it  seems  impossible  the  more  I  believe  it. ' ' 

And  as  there  are  ages  that  have  leanings  toward  certain 
mental  strivings,  one  age  for  discovery,  another  age  for  colo- 
nization, another  for  founding  new  religions,  M|nd  jn  certain 
another  for  conquest  or  revolution,  another  for  ages  prone  to  mys- 
poetry  or  science,  so  are  there  ages  that  have  ' 
leanings  toward  mysticism.  The  causes  contributive  to  mak- 
ing certain  ages  prone  to  mysticism  are  many  and  various.  It 
may  arise  from  protracted  persecutions  and  wars,  and  from  the 
fears  and  sufferings  they  call  forth,  as  was  the  case  in  Judea 
at  the  time  of  Christ.  It  may  be  produced  by  intensified  and 
disappointed  hero-worship,  as  was  the  case  among  the  early 
Christians.  It  may  be  produced  by  the  disintegration  of 
nation  or  creed,  as  was  the  case  in  Rome,  in  the  days  of  its 
decline  and  fall.  It  may  be  produced  by  the  prohibition  of 
reason  and  by  the  fears  of  the  torture  of  the  inquisition,  as 
was  the  case  during  the  Dark-Ages.  It  may  be  produced  by 
the  mind  having  become  sterile  by  long  and  strenuous  use  and 
abuse,  as  was  the  case  in  the  days  of  the  Kabbalists,  or  by  the 
body  having  become  exhausted  under  the  strain  of  misery 
and  oppression,  or  enervated  under  the  excess  of  luxury  and 
riotousness,  or  under  the  reaction  of  non-satisfying  unbelief, 
as  was  the  case  in  France,  after  the  reigns  of  Louis  XIV  and 
Louis  XV,  after  the  Reign  of  Terror,  after  the  rise  and  fall  of 
the  Napoleons,  or  in  the  days  of  Cagliostro  and  Mesmer,  or  as 
is  the  case  in  France  in  these  days  of  its  nervous  unrest  and 
moral  degeneracy. 


86 

There  is   yet   another  characteristic  of   mysticism.     As 
there  are  physical  diseases  that  are  epidemic  so  are  there  men- 
tal  disorders   that   are  contagious.     There    are 

Mysticism  In  cer-    .•  i  .•    •  -i  >  i 

tain  ages  epidemic  times  when  mysticism  becomes  a  mania  and 
when  the  sight  and  sound  of  it  affect  even  the 
strongest  minds.  We  recall  the  Witch  Mania  that  raged  dur- 
ing the  Middle-Ages,  up  to  comparatively  recent  times,  and  that 
was  shared  in  by  even  the  most  learned  men.  We  recall  the 
beliefs  in  personal  devils,  shared  in  by  even  so  strong  a  char- 
acter as  Martin  Luther.  We  recall  the  Dancing  Mania  of  the 
Middle-Ages,  when  men,  women  and  children  forsook  their 
shops  and  houses  by  the  thousands,  and  danced  themselves 
into  religious  frenzies,  till  their  delirious  brains  saw  all  sorts 
of  visions,  and  made  all  sorts  of  prophecies.  We  recall  the 
Children's  Crusade  Mania,  started  in  1212  by  a  shepherd  boy, 
who  believed  himself  commanded  by  God  to  conquer  the  Holy 
Land,  and  who  spread  the  hallucination  till  30,000  children 
followed  him  to  death  or  slavery.  We  recall  the  Flagellant 
Mania  of  the  same  century,  which  marched  thousands  upon 
thousands  of  deluded  fanatics  over  half  of  Europe,  from 
town  to  town,  bare  to  the  waist,  their  faces  hidden,  chanting 
dirges,  constantly  scourging  themselves  with  knotted  ropes, 
with  sharp  stones  or  thorns,  with  iron-pointed  sticks,  and 
atoning  for  their  sins  by  burning  synagogues  and  massacring 
Jews. 

This  review  of  some  of  the  mysticism  of  the  past,  and  of 
some  of  the  causes  that  gave  rise  to  them,  helps  us  to  account 

for  some  of  the  mysticism  of  our  own  day.   We  find 
Ours  such  an  age. 

the  contnbutive  causes  much  the  same  as  they 

were  in  the  past.  There  are  many  who  have  been  living  under 
high  pressure,  who  suffer  to-day  from  physical  break-down  and 
nervous  disorders,  and,  as  the  weakened  physical  system  is  sus- 
ceptible to  every  disease  that  comes  along,  so  does  the  exhausted 
mind  become  a  ready  victim  to  whatever  mental  malady  presents 
itself.  Many  suffer  from  mental  lassitude,  a  consequence  of 
the  high  tension  under  which  they  or  their  fathers  have  lived. 
They  have  lost  the  power  of  critical  and  independent  thought. 
They  want  others  to  do  their  thinking;  they  want  believing 
made  easy,  and  the  more  sensational  and  the  more  highly  sea- 


87 

soned  it  is  the  better  they  like  it.  Their  minds  cannot  stand 
intellectual  strain ;  they  skim  through  the  newspaper  and  mag- 
azine, especially  the  pictorial  sort;  they  have  not  the  power  of 
endurance  to  read  a  serious  work.  A  Shakespearian  play  bores 
them;  their  mind  can  stand  no  heavier  tax  than  opera  bouffe, 
comedy,  or  the  racy,  realistic  drama.  The  strain  under  which 
they  have  lived  has  snapped  the  cable  that  held  them  fast  to 
the  immovable  anchor  of  rational  faith,  and  so  they  are  drift- 
ing everywhich  way,  ready  to  be  caught  by  every  new  current 
that  comes  along. 

Others  suffer  from  the  reaction  caused  by  the  disappoint- 
ments of  science.  Spencer  and  Darwin,  Haeckel  and  Huxley 
had  led  them  to  expect  wonderful  revelations.  They  had 
hoped  to  see  the  unknown  made  known  at  last,  and  the  invis- 
ible visible.  They  had  hoped  to  be  finally  told  of  the  yester- 
day of  life  and  of  the  to-morrow  of  death.  They  had  hoped 
to  stand  at  last  face  to  face  with  the  human  soul,  and  see  the 
curtain  pulled  aside  that  had  concealed  God  from  mortal  view. 
The  eternal  mysteries,  however,  have  refused  to  give  up 
their  secrets,  and,  no  longer  possessing  the  mental  vigor  or 
the  physical  strength  to  wrestle  with  these  problems  as  did 
their  fathers  of  old,  disease,  trials,  bereavements  find  them 
less  ready  to  yield  to  the  inevitable  and  more  willing  to  fly  to 
any  mystic  or  quack  who  professes  to  hold  the  key  to  the  eter- 
nal mysteries  and  to  possess  the  elixir  of  spiritual  or  mental 
or  physical  health. 

One  thing  only  will  deliver  us  from  the  blight  of  mystic- 
ism that  is  settling  on  present-day  society:  a  return  to  the 
simple  modes  of  life,  a  return  to  plain-living  and  Rest  and  a  change 
high  thinking,  a  return  to  the  days  when  life  had  of  life  a  cure  for 
a  higher  meaning  than  racing  and  slaving  for 
money,  only  to  be  wasted  on  soul-ruining  luxuries  and  on 
body-destroying  dissipations.  We  are  physically  exhausted. 
We  have  worked  our  brain-fields  so  hard  and  so  long  under 
artificial  stimulants,  that  they  are  beginning  to  be  overrun  with 
weeds  and  thorns.  The  vitality  of  the  nation  has  been  drained. 
That  professor  was  about  right,  who,  on  being  consulted  by 
a  patient  coining  to  Germany  from  our  shores,  asked :  ' '  Are  you 
Americans  all  sick  ?"  We  have  probably  more  physicians  and 


88 

hospitals,  public  and  private,  than  all  of  Europe  combined,  and 
most  of  our  sickness  is  of  the  sort  that  can  be  cured  without 
drugs.  We  need  rest,  we  need  strength,  we  need  virility,  we 
need  nerves  and  sinews.  Like  the  bones  in  the  valley  of 
Ezekiel's  vision,  we  need  the  breath  of  God  to  give  us  new 
life.  We  need  the  conviction  that  for  mortal  mind  it  is  enough 
to  busy  itself  with  the  knowable.  "  The  secret  things  belong 
unto  Jehovah,  our  God;  but  the  things  that  are  revealed  be- 
long to  us." 


of 

IX— TRADE-UNIONISM. 


A  SUNDAY  DISCOURSE 

BEFORE    THE 

REFORM  CONGREGATION  KENESETH  ISRAEL, 

BT 

RABBI  JOSEPH  KRAUSKOPF,  D.  D. 

Philadelphia,  April  24th,  iqo4. 


Text:   "Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself."     LEVITICUS  xix,  18. 
SCRIPTURAL  SELECTION:  EXODUS  xxm,  1-12;  DEUTERONOMY  xxiv,  10-24. 


We  must  leave  it  to  demagogues  or  to  pre-election  poli- 
ticians to  deliver  themselves  of  fulsome  panegyrics  on  the 
dignity  of  labor,  and  on  the  blessings  conferred  Value  of  labor  too 
upon  society  by  the  laboring  man.  It  would  but  well  known  for 
be  wasting  your  time  and  mine  to  speak  of  what  p 
is  one  of  the  best  known  and  best  appreciated  truths  of  human 
knowledge.  Moreover,  it  would  be  but  singing  our  own 
praises  were  we  to  speak  of  all  that  labor  has  done  in  the 
promotion  of  civilization,  for,  are  not  you  and  I  laborers,  and 
most  of  us  hard  laborers,  and  have  not  many  of  us  been  hard 
laborers  nearly  all  our  lives  ?  And  more  than  wraste  of  time  it 
were  to  enter  upon  a  learned  disquisition  on  capital  and  labor, 
to  speak  wisely  on  the  co-partnership  between  the  two,  on 
their  mutuality  of  interests,  to  show,  with  much  ado,  how 
capital  and  labor  are  but  as  the  two  blades  of  a  pair  of  scissors, 
each  useless  without  the  other, — facts  so  wyell  known  and  so 
profoundly  appreciated  by  people  of  intelligence,  that  to  speak 
of  them  to  you  were  but  to  insult  your  intellect. 

And  an  indignity  to  the  pulpit  it  were  to   mouth  sancti- 
moniously of  religion's  protectorate  over  the  poor  and  oppressed. 

They  know  little  of  religion  who  have  not  yet 

Relation  of  religion 
learned  that  the  amelioration  of  the  lot  of  the  to  labor  too  well 

poor  and  the  protection  of  the  rights  of  the  weak   known  to  reiuire 

restatement. 

have  constituted,  from  the  nrst,  the  special  mis- 
sion of  religion.   They  know  little  of  religion  who  do  not  know 


90 

that  the  poor  are  the  special  charge  of  the  Bible,  the  special 
concern  of  the  Mosaic  legislation,  of  the  ministrations  of  the 
prophets,  of  the  labors  of  the  preacher  of  Nazareth, — a  truth 
well  recognized  by  Mr.  John  Mitchell,  the  President  of  the 
United  Mine  Workers  of  America,  when,  at  the  commencement 
of  the  troubles  between  the  anthracite  coal  operators  and  the 
miners,  two  years  ago,  he  sought  to  ward  off  the  imminent 
strike  by  proposing  that  "  a  committee  composed  of  Archbishop 
Ireland,  Bishop  Potter,  and  one  other  person  whom  these  two 
may  select,  be  authorized  to  make  an  investigation  into  the 
wages  and  conditions  of  the  miners,  and  if  they  decide  that 
the  average  annual  wages  received  are  sufficient  to  enable  them 
to  live,  maintain  and  educate  their  families  in  a  manner  con- 
formable to  established  American  standards  and  consistent 
with  American  citizenship,  the  miners  agree  to  withdraw  their 
claims  for  higher  wages  and  more  equitable  conditions  of  em- 
ployment." 

And  an  equal  waste  of  time  it  were,  to  enter  upon  a  dis- 
cussion on  the  benefits  of  capital  to  civilized  society,  and  on 

the  necessity  of  its  protection,  for  every  railroad 
Benefits  of  capital 
too  well  known  to  that  traverses  our  continent,  every  ship  that  plows 

require  re-  ^e  deep,  every  factory  and  mill,  every  forge  and 

emphasis.  . 

furnace,    every    university    and    library,    every 

school  and  art-gallery,  every  invention  that  lessens  the  hard- 
ship of  labor,  and  every  comfort  that  hightens  the  joy  of  life, 
speaks  of  the  blessings  of  capital  with  a  wisdom  and  an  elo- 
quence such  as  even  the  most  learned  writer  on  economics  or 
the  most  eloquent  orator  cannot  reach. 

Starting,  therefore,  with  axiomatic  truths  of  economics  as 

our  basis,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that,  if  anything  be  said  in  the 

development   of   our  discourse  which  may  seem 

Criticism  of  capital  ••,•,•,  •      • 

and  labor  not  to  be  harsh   either  to   capital  or  labor,  it  is  not  to  be 

charged  to  igno-  charged  to  ignorance  of    the    subject,    to    pre- 
rance  or  prejudice.    ...  .     . 

judice  or  to  partiality. 

And  that  something  is  to  be  said  must  be  evident  even  to 

the  superficial  observer.     There  exists  a  state  of  war  between 

A  state  of  war  be-  capital   and   labor.     There  is   bitter  conflict  in 

tween  capital  and  some  quarters;    there   is   menacing   hostility  in 

others.     Employer  and  employee  stand  arrayed 


against  each  other  with  gauntleted  hands.  Strong  leagues  are 
compacted;  open  and  secret  alliances  are  formed.  Hostile 
campaigns  are  carried  on  in  trade-papers  and  on  platforms; 
bitter  incriminations  and  recriminations  are  published  in  lurid 
type.  Pictorial  art  is  resorted  to  to  inflame  the  mind.  Capital 
is  represented  as  a  Moloch,  growing  fat  on  the  heart's  blood 
of  the  poor;  and  labor  is  shown  as  an  anarchist  whose  sole  aim 
is  the  crushing  of  the  labor-giver.  The  two,  that  in  the 
economic  household  are  as  closely  bound  together  as  are 
husband  and  wife  in  domestic  life,  and  that  should  live  peace- 
fully side  by  side,  promoting  each  others  good  and  furthering 
the  highest  ends  of  society,  are  engaged  in  a  bitter  struggle, 
and  a  victory  by  the  one  or  the  other  is  heralded  as  exultingly 
as  Japan  or  Russia  publish  theirs. 

The  cause  of  the  contention  between  the  two,  the  Man- 
churia between  capital  and  labor,  is  largely  Trade- Unionism. 
As  in  the  case  of  Japan  and  Russia,  each  believes   Trade-union 
that  it  has  right  on  its  side,  and,  listening  to  the  cause  of  conten- 
story  of  each,  the  uninformed  is  at  a  loss  to  tell  * 
why  there  should  be  the  slightest  contention  between  the  two. 

Turn  to  Mr.  John  Mitchel's  recent  book  entitled  '''Organ- 
ized Labor,'"  and  you  read:   "  Labor  unions  are  for  the  work- 
man, but  against  no  one.     They  are  not  hostile  Trade-union's 
to  employers,  not  inimical  to  the  interests  of  the  statement. 

general  public There  is  no  necessary  hostility  between 

labor  and  capital.     Neither  can  do  without  the  other 

The  interest  of  the  one  is  the  interest  of  the  other,  and  tilt- 
prosperity  of  the  one  is  the  prosperity  of  the  other 

Trade-unionism  has  justified  its  existence  by  good  works  and 
high  purposes.  At  one  time  viewed  with  suspicion  by  work- 
man and  employer  alike,  it  has  gained  the  affections  of  the  one 
and  the  enlightened  esteem  of  the  other.  ...  It  has  improved 

the  relations  between  the  employer  and  employed The 

labor  union  is  a  great,  beneficent,  democratic  institution,  not 
all-good,  not  all- wise,  not  all-powerful,  but  with  the  generous 

virtues    and   enthusiastic  faults    of   youth The    trade 

agreement  makes  for  peace  in  the  industrial  world."* 


*  Preface,  pp.  ix-xi. 


92 

Turn  to  the  book  entitled  "Some  Ethical  Phases  of  the 
Labor  Question,'"  by  Carroll  D.  Wright,  U.  S.  Commissioner  of 
The  employers'  Labor,  and  after  reading  of  the  miseries  and 
statement,  hardships  of  labor,  prior  to  the  introduction  of 
the  modern  factory  system,  made  possible  by  capital,  you  hear 
his  verdict:  "Better  morals,  better  sanitary  conditions,  better 
health,  better  wages, — these  are  the  practical  results  of  the 
factory  system  as  compared  with  that  which  preceded  it."* 
You  inquire  of  heads  of  large  industrial  establishments,  and 
they  tell  you  of  the  well-equipped,  sanitary  shops  and  factories 
and  mills,  of  the  many  provisions  that  have  been  made  to 
lessen  the  drudgery  of  toil  by  means  of  labor-saving  machinery, 
of  the  comforts  that  have  been  introduced,  such  as  lunch- 
rooms, wash-rooms,  reading-rooms,  and  the  like;  of  the  im- 
proved dwellings  that  are  furnished  to  employees,  and  of  the 
opportunity  that  is  afforded  them  for  mental  and  moral  and 
physical  culture.  You  question  some  recently  arrived  laborers, 
and  they  tell  you  of  the  starvation  wages  they  received  in  the 
old  world,  of  the  starvation  food  on  which  they  subsisted,  of 
the  long  hours  of  labor  that  were  required  of  them,  of  the 
miserable  homes  in  which  they  lived,  of  the  hard  labor  that 
was  exacted  of  their  wives,  even  of  their  children,  to  enable 
their  families  to  eke  out  an  existence. 

After  listening  to  such  highly  colored  accounts  of  the 
attitude  of  employer  and  employee  toward  each  other,  what 
statements  could  be  more  natural  than  to  conclude  that  the 

contradicted.  most  harmonious  relationship  exists  between  the 
two?  But  we  have  heard  also  the  other  story.  We  know 
that  employers  deny  the  professions  of  peacefulness  made  by 
the  trades  unions,  and  employees  declare  that  they  see  no  sign 
of  the  good-will  pretended  by  employers,  that  they  pay  in  toil, 
twice  and  thrice  over  for  whatever  little  they  get.  The  one 
side  claims  that  trade-unionism  has  but  the  enslavement  and 
ruination  of  capital  for  its  goal,  or,  at  best,  that  its  object  is, 
as  President  Eliot  of  Harvard  University  expressed  it,  "to 
work  as  few  hours  as  possible,  to  produce  as  little  as  possible 
during  that  time,  and  to  receive  as  much  as  possible  for  the 


*  Chap,  in,  p.  131. 


93 

service  given."  The  other  side  declares  that  the  Money  Trust 
and  the  Operators'  Combines  exist  solely  for  the  purpose  of 
crushing  every  labor  union  and  of  stamping  out  every  right 
and  liberty  of  the  laboring  man. 

If  the  latter  claim  be  indeed  the  aim  of  employers,  they 
will  never  succeed.  The  progress  of  evolution  is  forward  and 
upward.  The  slave  rose  into  the  serf,  the  serf  . 

Labor   cannot   be 
into  the  free  man,  and  no  trust  and  no  combine,   degraded  into  serf- 

nor  all  of  the  trusts  combined,  will  ever  succeed  dom' 
in   degrading   the   American   laboring-man    back    again    into 
slavery,  or  even  into  serfdom.     The  recognition  of  his  rights, 
has  been  purchased  at  too  dear  a  price  to  be  surrendered  with- 
out a  bitter  struggle. 

There  is  certainly  no  gainsaying  that  laboring-men  have 
a  legal  and  a  moral  right  to  organize  unions  for  self -protection 
and  self-improvement.  There  was  a  time  when  |_at)or  has  the 
master  and  man  worked  side  by  side  at  the  loom  r'flht  to  organize, 
or  at  the  shoemaker's  bench  or  in  the  wagon-shop,  and  when 
the  employee  had  no  difficulty  to  reach  the  ear  of  the  employer, 
for  the  righting  of  wrongs,  for  the  lessening  of  hours  or  for 
the  increase  of  wages.  But,  modern  expansion  of  industries 
has  created  new  conditions  and  presents  new  problems.  The 
individual  is  lost  in  the  corporation;  the  owner  is  replaced  by 
foremen,  bosses,  managers,  superintendents,  directors. 

Capital  deals  in  representative  capacity,  and  labor  is 
obliged  to  do  the  same.  It  must  have  its  representative  to  pro- 
tect its  rights.  It  is  with  the  same  end  in  view  that  Labor  ||ke  ca  ,ta 
we  organize  Government.  Individuals  combine  must  act  in  repre- 
ancl  select  a  councilman  to  represent  them  in  sentatlve  capacity, 
municipal  government;  a  legislator  in  state  government;  a 
congressman  in  national  government.  Union  and  representa- 
tion are  American  principles;  they  are  the  very  foundation  of 
our  liberties,  and  must  have  sacred  recognition  by  every  free- 
dom-loving American. 

It  is  well  for  employers  to  heed  the  counsel  given  in  the 
Report  submitted  to  the  Government  by  the  Commission,  that 
was  appointed  by  President  Roosevelt,  two  years  Labor  organization 
ago,  to  adjust  the  anthracite  coal  strike,  which  approved  by  Coal 

Strike  Commission 

Commission  consisted  of  seven  men.  whose  ina- 


94 

partiality,  whose  grasp  of  the  labor  problem,  and  whose 
general  wisdom  are  unquestioned.  '  'The  claim  of  the  worker, ' ' 
says  their  Report,  "that  he  has  the  same  right  to  join  with 
his  fellows  in  forming  an  organization,  through  which  to  be 
represented,  that  the  stockholder  of  the  corporation  has  to  join 
others  in  forming  the  corporation,  and  to  be  represented  by 
its  directors  and  other  officers,  seems  to  be  thoroughly  well 
founded,  not  only  in  ethics  but  under  economic  considerations. 
"Some  employers  say  to  their  employees:  'We  do  not 
object  to  your  joining  the  union,  but  we  will  not  recognize 

And  its  recogni-  y°ur  union  nor  deal  with  it  as  representing  you.' 
tion  counselled  by  If  the  union  is  to  be  rendered  impotent,  and  its 

usefulness  is  to  be  nullified  by  refusing  to  permit 
it  to  perform  the  functions  for  which  it  is  created,  and  for 
which  alone  it  exists,  permission  to  join  it  may  well  be  con- 
sidered as  a  privilege  of  doubtful  value.  Trade-unionism  is 
rapidly  becoming  a  matter  of  business,  and  that  employer  who 
fails  to  give  the  same  careful  attention  to  the  question  of  his 
relation  to  his  labor  or  his  employees,  which  he  gives  to  the 
other  factors  which  enter  into  the  conduct  of  his  business, 
makes  a  mistake,  which  sooner  or  later  he  will  be  obliged  to 
correct.  In  this,  as  in  other  things,  it  is  much  better  to  start 
right  than  to  make  mistakes  in  starting,  which  necessitate 
returning  to  correct  them.  Experience  shows  that  the  more 
full  the  recognition  given  to  a  trades  union,  the  more  business- 
like and  responsible  it  becomes.  Through  dealing  with  busi- 
ness men  in  business  matters,  its  more  intelligent,  conservative, 
and  responsible  members  come  to  the  front  and  gain  general 
control  and  direction  of  its  affairs.  If  the  energy  of  the  em- 
ployer is  directed  to  discouragement  and  repression  of  the 
union,  he  need  not  be  surprised  if  the  more  radically  inclined 
members  are  the  ones  most  frequently  heard."* 

Next  to  the  right  of  representative  union,  laboring  men 
are  entitled  to  an  adequate  share  of  the  profits  of  labor.     It  is 

certainly  uniust  that  the  lion's  share  should  fall 

Labor   entitled    to  J          •> 

adequate  share  of  to  capital,  while  labor,  the  equal  producer  of  it, 
should   be   obliged    to   content    itself    with   the 

*  Bulletin  oi  the  Department  of  Labor,  No.  46,  May  1903,  p.  489. 


95 

pickings;  that  the  one,  from  the  profits  of  capital,  should  be 
enabled  to  riot  in  luxurj7  and  to  revel  in  extravagance,  while 
the  other,  from  the  product  of  labor,  should  be  barely  able  to 
keep  body  and  soul  together. 

And  next  to  the  right  of  adequate  wages,  the  laborer  has 
a  right  to  reasonable  hours  of  work.     It  is  wrong  to  place 

human    flesh    in    competition    with    steam    and 

,  .  Tr  ,  .     ,  .         ....  Labor   entitled  to 

machinery.  If  modern  industrial  life  cannot  reasonable  hours, 
leave  to  the  laborer  the  privilege  of  breaking  off  and  to  *et  otner 
his  day's  task  whenever  he  chooses,  the  laborer 
in  return  must  be  guaranteed  no  longer  hours  of  toil  than  is 
consistent  with  the  needs  of  health,  with  the  obligations 
toward  his  family,  with  the  duties  he  owes  to  his  self-improve- 
ment. Moreover,  the  laborer  has  rights  to  be  protected  against 
being  "  blacklisted,"  when  exercising  his  inalienable  privilege 
of  selling  his  labor  to  whomsoever  he  chooses.  When  seeking 
employment,  he  has  the  right  not  to  be  discriminated  against 
for  being  a  member  of  a  trades-union.  He  has  the  right  of 
uniting  with  his  fellow-laborers  in  peacefully  quitting  work, 
if  his  demand  for  higher  wages  or  lesser  hours,  or  his  request 
for  righting  certain  real  or  imaginary  wrongs  be  not  complied 
with. 

All  these  rights  the  laborer  has,  and  all  these  rights  every 
loyal  American  and  lover  of  humanity  sacredly  honors.     But 

when    the    trades-union    passes    beyond    these 

.  .  ...  Labor,  however, 

rights,  and  invades  the  territory  of  the  employer,    has  no  right  to  in- 

when  it  arrogates  to  itself  the  right  to  run  the  vade  employer's 

territory 

employer  s  business,  the  right  to  dictate  to  the 
employer  whom  he  may  and  may  not  employ,  how  much 
wages  he  may  and  may  not  pay,  from  whom  he  may  and  may 
not  buy,  and  to  whom  he  may  and  may  not  sell,  how  many 
hours  he  may  and  may  not  work,  how  many  machines  he  may 
run,  and  at  what  speed,  how  many  apprentices  he  may  and 
may  not  employ,  when  it  undertakes  to  cripple  the  employer's 
industry  by  calling  out  its  men,  because  of  sympathy  with 
other  strikers,  or,  because  of  his  employing  non-union  men,  by 
boycotting  his  wares,  by  sending  out  its  pickets  to  way-lay 
non-union  men,  and  to  force  them  by  intimidation  or  violence 
either  to  leave  work  or  to  join  the  union, — it  is  then  that  the 


96 

trades-union  becomes  an  organized  tyrasny,  and  the  union- 
man  a  despot.  It  is  then  that  a  state  of  war  exists  between 
employer  and  employee,  and  that,  in  retaliation,  capital  resorts 
to  drastic  measures  that  are  no  less  reprehensible. 

That  the  laborer  has  rights  which  the  employer  is  bound 
to  respect,  we  have  already  seen.  He  has  the  right  to  dispose 
Must  respect  of  his  labor,  which  is  his  capital,  as  he  pleases. 

rights  of  employer  jje  has  the  right  to  leave  his  employer  and  his 

as  wants  employer 

respect  rights  of  work  if  neither  of  them  suit  him.     He  has  the 

labor-  right  to  leave  his  employer  if  no  longer  satisfied 

with  wages  or  hours  of  work,  and  sell  his  labor  in  the  market 
in  which  it  commands  the  highest  price.  But  the  right  which 
he  respects  when  it  touches  him,  he  must  no  less  respect  when 
it  touches  others.  He  must  grant  to  employer  the  same  right 
to  engage  or  to  discharge  whomsoever  he  pleases,  to  work  as 
many  hours  as  his  needs  require,  to  buy  from  or  to  sell  to 
whomsoever  he  desires.  In  a  free  country  like  ours,  it  is  a 
fundamental  principle  that  every  man  is  entitled  to  full,  legal 
control  over  what  is  his  own.  It  has  well  been  said,  "corporate 
capital  to-day  owns  its  ship  or  engine  or  factory,  minus  the 
right  to  control  or  administer  them.  Organized  labor  owns 
itself  plus  the  right  to  administer  the  factory  or  the  mine  or 
the  locomotive  of  the  capitalist,"  to  which  might  be  added: 
plus  the  right  to  own  or  to  terrorize  those  who,  for  reasons  of 
their  own,  have  not  joined  the  organization,  and  who  seek  to 
fill  the  places  voluntarily  vacated  by  union-men. 

I  will  grant  that  it  is  irritating  to  see  men  ready  to  take 

the  place  vacated  because  of  insufficient  pay,  or  because  of  too 

many  hours  of  work,  or  because  of  some  other 

Has  right  to  per- 
suasion but  not  to  grievance,  and  I  can  see  every  reason  why  such 
lawlessness.  people  should  be  peaceably  reasoned  with,  and, 
if  possible,  made  to  join  the  union.  But,  to  set  upon  such  men, 
when  argument  fails,  to  assail  them,  to  endanger  their  lives,  to 
persecute  their  families  and  those  that  have  relations  with  them, 
yea,  even  to  burn  or  dynamite  their  homes,  or  to  club  or 
shoot  them  to  death — and  not  only  them  but  also  officers  of 
the  law,  delegated  by  the  city  or  the  State  to  protect  them  in 
the  lawful  discharge  of  their  rights — such  proceedure  is  a 


97 

degree  of  lawlessness  nothing  short  of  anarchy,  and  demands 
the  most  condign  penalty  of  the  law. 

It  is  lawlessness,  says  the  Anthracite  Coal  Strike  Com- 
mission, when  a  trade-union  regards  itself  above  the  authority 
of  the  law  of  the  land,  and  makes  rules  and  regu-  The  )awie8sne88  0, 
lations  in  contravention  thereof.  It  is  lawless-  intimidation  and 
ness,  when  a  trades-union  constitutes  itself  a  vlolence- 
governing  agency,  and  claims  authority  "to  control  those  who 
have  refused  to  join  its  ranks  and  to  consent  to  its  government, 
and  to  deny  to  them  the  personal  liberties  which  are  guaran- 
teed to  every  citizen  by  the  constitution  and  laws  of  the  land. 
It  was  Abraham  Lincoln  who  said,  ' '  No  man  is  good  enough 
to  govern  another  man  without  that  other's  consent."  It  is 
lawlessness  to  bring  privations  and  sufferings  upon  an  in- 
offending  community  because  of  a  want  of  a  commodity  which 
non-union-men  are  ready  to  furnish,  but  which  union-men 
will  not  permit  under  the  threat  of  violence. 

It  is  lawlessness  to  boycott  the  produce  of  a  manufacturer 
who  has  incurred  the  ill-will  of  a  trades-union,  and  to  extend 
the  anathema  to  every  trader  who  handles  such 
boycotted  goods,  even  to  consumers  who  pur-  The 
chase  them.  It  is  not  an  inapt  comparison  to 
liken  the  boycott  to  the  ecclesiastical  ban.  As  there  was  no 
more  cruel  weapon  during  the  Dark-  and  Middle-Ages  than 
the  ban  to  bring  refractory  individuals  to  the  feet  of  the 
church,  so  does  the  modern  industrial  world  know  of  no  more 
cruel  weapon  than  the  boycott,  used  by  the  trades-union  to 
bring  under  its  yoke  employers,  who  persist  in  the  belief  that 
they  have  a  right  to  manage  their  own  affairs.  The  Anthracite 
Coal  Strike  Commission  speakes  of  it  in  its  Report  as  "  a  con- 
spiracy at  common  law,  and  merits  and  should  receive  the  pun- 
ishment due  to  such  a  crime. ' ' 

They  cite  examples  of  a  few  coal-region  boycotts.  ' '  A 
young  school  mistress  of  intelligence,  character,  and  attain- 
ments, was  boycotted,  her  dismissal  from  employ-  Examples  of  bo  . 
ment  compelled,  for  no  other  reason  than  that  a  cott  cited  by  Com- 
brother,  not  living  in  her  immediate  family,  chose  m  ss  on< 
to  work  contrary  to  the  wishes  and  will  of  the  striking  miners. 
A  lad,  about  fifteen  years  old,  employed  in  a  drug  store,  was 


98 

discharged,  owing  to  threats  made  to  his  employer  by  a  dele- 
gation of  the  strikers,  on  behalf  of  their  organization,  for  the 
reason  that  his  father  had  chosen  to  return  to  work  before  the 
strike  was  ended.  In  several  instances  tradesmen  were  threat- 
ened with  a  boycott — that  is,  that  all  connected  with  the 
strikers  would  withhold  from  them  their  custom,  and  persuade 
others  to  do  so,  if  they  continued  to  furnish  the  necessaries  of 
life  to  the  families  of  certain  workmen,  who  had  come  under 
the  ban  of  the  displeasure  of  the  striking  organization."* 

To  these  examples  cited  by  the  Coal  Strike  Commission, 
the  following  instance  might  be  added:  A  general  strike  was 

declared  at  the  Lincoln  Iron  Works  of  Rutland, 
pie  cited  8  Vt.  because  of  the  Company's  refusal  to  comply 

with  certain  demands  made  by  certain  of  their  em- 
ployees. Continuing  to  operate  with  such  men  as  chose  to  re- 
main, the  firm  was  subjected  to  outrageous  treatment.  Every 
effort  was  made  by  the  union  to  crush  the  firm.  The  plant  was 
surrounded  by  pickets.  Entrance  and  exit  were  exceedingly 
dangerous.  The  trade  was  warned  away  under  the  threat  of  per- 
sonal injury,  and  under  like  threats  purchasers  were  compelled 
to  cancel  their  orders,  or  to  refuse  to  accept  them  when  deliv- 
ered. To  quote  from  the  official  statement,  ' '  Committees  visited 
hotels  and  boarding  houses,  and  by  intimidations  prevented  our 
men  from  getting  boarded  or  a  place  to  live,  so  that  we  have 
been  obliged  to  fit  up  boarding-houses,  and  surround  them 
with  a  high  fence  and  provide  police-protection.  Tradesmen 
have  been  warned  by  the  union  not  to  sell  goods  to  our  present 
workmen.  Barbers  have  been  threatened  if  they  shave  them. 
Grocers  have  been  threatened  with  boycott  if  they  sell  provi- 
sions to  the  boarding-houses  where  our  employees  stay.  Bakers 
have  been  importuned  to  refuse  to  supply  bread.  Workmen 
of  other  trades  have  been  warned  not  to  do  work  for  us.  This 
boycotting  and  annoyance  of  innocent  storekeepers  and  trades- 
men is  unjust,  unmanly,  un-American.  .  .  .  We  have  endea- 
vored to  treat  our  employees  justly  and  fairly,  and  we  believe 
that  the  majority  of  those  who  have  left  our  employ  would 
testify  to-day  to  that  effect.  We  have  always  paid  our  bills 


*  Bulletin  of  the  Department  of  Labor,  No.  46,  May  1903,  pp.  502-503. 


99 

promptly,  and  have  not  missed  a  pay  roll  in  more  tlian  twenty 
years.  We  believe  that  we  should  be  permitted  to  manage 
our  own  business,  and  to  employ  whom  we  choose,  and  that 
those  who  wish  to  work  for  us  have  the  right  to  do  so,  not- 
withstanding the  demands  of  the  Union  that  all  workmen  must 
join  their  ranks  and  obey  their  mandates  or  starve." 

But  union-men  may  say:  '  'Take  from  us  the  boycott  against 
employers,    and    the   coercion   of   non-union   men,   and  what 

is  the  union  good  for,  and  what  weapon  is  left 

c  c    1.4.  4/u  •  r    "What  good   of 

for  us  to  nght  the  power  and  aggressiveness  of  laber-union   with- 


corporate  capital  ?'  '  out  boycott  or  co- 

To  which  we  would  reply:  All  is  left  to  the 
union;  nothing  is  taken  from  it  except  its  lawlessness.     Labor 
unions  are  mighty  factors  for  good  when  kept  within  the  con- 
fines of  the  law,  and  ministered  in  the  American   Labor-uninn  can 
spirit  of  liberty  for  all.     If  capital  is  grasping-,    be  a  mighty  factor 

•t      f/        •        -r  1  for  good. 

as,  alas,  it  otten  is,  if  employers  are  aibitrary 

and  unreasonable,  as,  no  doubt,  they  often  are,  the  union  can 
deal  with  them  by  other  means  than  lawlessness.  What  folly 
greater  than  resorting  to  violence,  when  back  of  the  rights  of 
labor  stands  the  greatest  power  on  earth,  Public  Opinion,  — 
by  far  the  largest  part  of  adult  human  kind  are  wage-earning 
laboring  people. 

Let  the  union  do  the  blessed  work  that  is  its  sphere  to  do. 
Let  it  educate  public  opinion.  Let  it  provide  for  the  exist- 
ence of  Commissions  of  Conciliation,  and  for 
permanent  Boards  of  Arbitration.  Let  the  union  *hnaJ0labor'uniOB 
educate  its  own  men  to  the  American  conception 
of  fairness,  and  to  the  American  mode  of  peaceably  disposing 
of  difficulties.  Let  the  union  rid  itself  of  professional  agita- 
tors, and  of  unscrupulous  leaders  of  the  Samuel  J.  Parks 
stripe,  now  in  Sing  Sing  prison.  Let  the  union  study  economic 
questions,  and  investigate  conditions  of  the  labor  markets,  and 
do  its  own  thinking.  Let  the  union  strive  to  better  the  laboring- 
man's  condition,  but  not  by  ruinous  and  demoralizing  strikes. 
Not  in  trying  to  do  the  least  possible  work  for  the  largest  pos- 
sible wage,  but  in  earning  the  largest  possible  wage,  consist- 
ent with  the  demands  of  health  and  culture,  lies  the  salvation  of 
the  American  working-man,  lies  the  possibility  of  the  American 


IOO 

market  maintaining  its  efficiency  and  supremacy.  Let  the 
union  encourage  wise  distribution  of  labor,  thus  preventing 
overcrowding,  and  underbidding  of  price  for  the  limited  labor 
in  the  market.  Let  the  union  lessen  the  pressure  on  the  labor 
market,  and  its  consequent  reduction  of  wages,  by  encourag- 
ing a  return  to  the  soil,  where  there  is  abundant  of  work,  and 
good  wages,  and  good  health  for  the  millions. 

And  let  capital  learn  to  be  just.     Let  it  honor  itself  by 

honoring  labor,  and  promote  its  own  best  good  by  promoting 

the   welfare    of   the   laboring-man.       There  are 

What  capital  must   many  thingg   that  are  more  profitable  to  capital 

than  profits.  Justice  is  one  of  them,  honesty  is 
another,  considerate-ness  is  a  third,  sympathy  is  a  fourth. 
There  are  a  few  quotations  that  capital  can  better  afford  to  re- 
member than  market-  or  stock-quotations,  two  of  them  from 
the  Old  Testament,  one  of  them  from  the  New  Testament. 
One  of  them  reads;  "  Thou  shaljt  not  steal."  The  other  reads: 
"  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself."  The  third  reads: 
"All  things  whatsoever  ye  would  that  men  should  do  unto 
von.  even  so  do  ve  also  unto  them." 


A  Rabbi's  Impressions  of  the  Oberammergau  Passion  Play 

By  RABBI  JOS.  KRAUSKOPF,  D.  D. 

A  handsome  edition  in  OCTAVO  FORM,  of  the  entire  series  of  RABBI  JOSEPH 
KRAUSKOPF'S  DISCOURSES  on  the  above  subject. 

The  subject  is  one  of  absorbing  interest,  ably  and  exhaustively  treated,  and 
the  work  has  a  distinct  literary  value.  With  an  introduction  by  the  author. 

As  a  piece  of  book -making,  it  is  all  that  good  paper,  good  print,  good  bind- 
ing can  make  it.  Price  $1.25.  Postage  10  Cents. 

EDWARD  STERN  &  CO.,  PUBLISHERS,  PHILADELPHIA. 

For  Sale  by  OSCAR  KLONOWER,  1435   Euclid  Avenue,  Philadelphia. 


SOME     OPINIONS. 


From  the  Author  of  the  "  History  of  Universal 
Literature,"  Dr.  Gustav  Karpeles: 

I  regard  a  translation  of  it  into  German  as 
exceedingly  necessary.  We  have  no  work  in 
German  literature  which  points  out  the  dif- 
ference between  Jew  and  Christian  from  a 
modern  point  of  view  so  critically  as  you  do 
in  your  book. 

From  Dr.  B.  Felsenthal : 

Coming  from  the  clear  mind  and  warm 
heart  of  one  who  masters  his  subject,  written 
in  a  popular,  yet  elevated  and  elevating  lan- 
guage, it  will,  no  doubt,  contribute  very  much 
to  implant  into  the  hearts  of  its  Jewish 
readers  new  love  for  Judaism,  and  into  the 
hearts  of  its  non-Jewish  readers  esteem  and 
appreciation  of  a  people  and  of  a  religion 
which  many  of  them  were  used  to  look  upon 
with  prejudice,  often  with  contempt. 

Rev.  E.  P.  Dinsmore,  Minister  of  the  Second  Uni- 
tarian Church,  writes : 

The  frame  of  mind  in  which  the  reading  of 
the  book  left  me  is  one  of  indignation  at  the 
perpetuation  of  a  falsehood  against  the  Jew- 
ish people  which  has  wrought  such  cruel 
suffering,  and  its  retention  upon  the  pulpits 
dedicated  to  Truth. 

Claude  G.   Montefiore   writes   In    "Tht   Jewish 
Quarterly  Review."  London. 

Dr.  Krauskopf  puts  his  own  case  strongly; 
he  speaks  out  in  no  uncertain  voice  (and  well 
he  mav)  about  the  calumnies  and  bitter  per- 
secutions from  which  the  Jews  have  suffered 
and  are  suffering,  but  for  himself  good  will, 
forbearance  and  brotherly  love  are  his  watch- 
words; these  are  the  qualities  which  he  de- 
sires to  see  prevail  and  it  is  to  advance  their 
cause  that  his  book  was  written. 

One  of  the  most  excellent  things  of  Dr. 
Krauskopf's  book  is  the  clear  and  ingenious 
way  in  which  the  author  weaves  his  New 
Testament  criticisms  and  his  capital  descrip- 
tions of  the  play  together.  In  the  first  five 
sermons  we  are  never  allowed  to  forget  that 
we  are  listening  to  some  one  who  has  been  to 
Oberammergau,  and  that  his  immediate  pur- 
pose is  to  give  us  a  description,  as  well  as  im- 
pressions of  what  he  actually  saw  and  heard. 
It  is  no  mere  dry  criticism  therefore  which 
the  preacher  gives  us;  no  mere  assertions  of 
what  he  conceives  the  course  of  events  to 
have  actually  been,  but  while  these  criticisms 
and  assertions  are  in  a  sense  the  real  object 
of  the  whole  book,  they  are  apparently  sub- 
ordinated to  the  impressions  and  descriptions. 
The  total  result  makes  very  good  reading  and 
leaves  a  pleasing  effect  upon  the  mind. 


The  Hon.  Andrew  D.  White,  United  States  Ambas- 
sador to  Germany,  writes : 

The  fairness  and  liberality  of  your  treat- 
ment of  the  whole  subject,  as  well  as  the 
beautiful  garb  you  have  given  the  thoughts, 
ought  to  commend  the  work  to  every  think- 
ing man  and  woman,  whether  Jew  or  Gentile. 

From  "  The  Philadelphia  Press." 

Rabbi  Joseph  Krauskopf's  well-known  abil- 
ities as  a  preacher  and  writer,  a  scholar  and 
a  man  of  sincere  thought  and  high  intellec- 
tion, naturally  would  tend  to  make  anything 
he  might  write  on  some  great  religious  cere- 
mony interesting,  and  a  distinct  contribution 
to  the  matter  in  hand.  But  when  he  ap- 
proaches such  a  subject  as  the  Passion  Play 
at  Oberammergau  from  the  intense  emotional 
standpoint  of  one  who  sees  his  race  maligned 
in  gross  caricature,  his  discussion  and  descrip- 
tion take  on  a  keener  tone,  and  possess  an 
additional  value  as  a  sort  of  human  docu- 
ment. 


John  E.  Roberts,  Pastor  of  the   Free  Church, 
Kansas  City,  Mo.,  writes: 

I  wish  every  Christian  in  the  world  could 
read  that  book.  Every  one  that  is  intelligent 
and  amenable  to  reason  would  want  to  devote 
every  remaining  energy  to  the  making  of 
amends  to  that  great  people  whom  to  execrate 
and  despise  has  been  the  paramount  duty  of 
Christians  for  centuries. 

Israel  Abrahams,  Editor  of  the  "Jewish  Chron- 
icle," London,  writes : 

Dr.  Krauskopf  is  always  entertaining,  here 
he  is  bold  as  well.  .  .  . 

His  manner  is  respectful  though  strong,  he 
is  suave  though  uncompromising. 

Dr.  Krauskopf  pleases  the  historian  as  well 
as  the  theologian.  He  analyzes  the  story  of 
the  Gospels  scene  by  scene,  and  fearlessly 
exposes  their  incredibility,  the  lack  of  his- 
toric evidence  for  them.  He  is  particularly 
good  about  the  trial  of  Jesus. 

From  "The  Jewish  Messenger." 

Dr.  Krauskopf  writes  courageously  and  to 
the  point.  His  words  are  for  both  communi- 
ties and  teach  a  needed  lesson  to  Jew  and 
non-Jew.  The  one  will  rise  from  the  perusal 
of  the  book  with  more  reverence  for  his 
religion  and  his  ancestors;  the  other  with 
more  appreciation  of  the  Jewish  creed  and 
knowledge  of  Jewish  history.  It  is  a  book 
adapted  to  remove  prejudices  and  instil  a 
clearer  understanding  of  the  rise  of  Christian 
traditions. 


SOME:  OPINIONS. 


From  "  Book  News." 

Dr.  Krauskopf  has  given  to  the  world  a 
work  of  great  literary  value.  The  intellectual 
force  of  his  arguments,  the  eloquence  of  the 
plea  for  his  people,  the  strength  and  power 
as  well  as  the  beauty  and  grace  in  which  he 
has  couched  his  opinions,  and  the  boldness 
with  which  he  has  set  forth  his  doctrines  and 
challenged  the  world  to  disprove  them,  all 
show  him  to  be  a  man  of  giant  intellectual 
power,  and  also  of  admirable  literary  skill, 
so  that  even  the  strongest  theological  opposer, 
even  the  intensest  hater  of  the  Jews,  must 
give  due  admiration  and  respect  to  the  genius 
of  this  patriotic  representative  of  the  Hebrew 
people. 

From  the  "American  Israelite,"  Cincinnati. 

The  author's  evident  desire  to  free  himself 
from  all  bias,  entitle  him  to  respect,  and  his 
utterances  to  calm  consideration.  His  book 
is,  to  say  the  least,  an  extremely  interesting 
contribution  to  current  literature,  and  is  well 
worth  reading.  The  style  is  clear  and  simple, 
arid  needs  no  technical  training  for  compre- 
hension by  the  average  layman. 

From  the  "American  Hebrew,"  New  York. 

....  The  inconsistencies  of  the  historians, 
the  inaccuracies  of  which  they  are  guilty, 
assuming  them  to  have  secured  their  infor- 
mation first  hand,  are  exposed  with  much 
skill  and  vigor  of  utterance Commend- 
ation is  due  the  author  for  the  clearness  and 
fearlessness  with  which  he  states  his  position. 


From  "The  Philadelphia  Times." 

Of  Jesus,  the  man,  the  Rabbi  speaks  with 
the  greatest  reverence.  The  Jew  is  proud  of 
Jesus,  as  he  is  of  other  illustrious  men  of  his 
race.  He  believes  that  he  honors  Jesus  more 
by  denying  His  divinity  than  by  affirming  it. 

The  writer  has  made  excellent  use  of  the 
historical  data  at  his  command  to  controvert 
the  errors  of  nineteen  centuries. 

From  "Allgemeine  Zeitung  des  Judenthums." 

....  The  book  deserves  dissemination  in 
the  widest  circles. 

It  does  not  incite,  it  does  not  injure.  By 
means  of  its  simple,  yet  logical  demonstration 
of  that  great  injustice  which,  owing  to  a  false 
apprehension  and  presentation  of  the  life  of 
Jesus  by  the  Christian  world  of  thought,  has 
been  inflicted  upon  the  Jewish  people  fot 
nineteen  hundred  years,  the  book  gives  a 
vigorous  call  for  justice. 

From  "The  North  American,"  Philadelphia. 

There  is  a  calm  certainty  in  his  grasp  of  the 
sources  of  Christian  and  Hebrew  theological 
knowledge  which  leads  one  to  trust  one's  sell 
to  his  guidance  in  this  respect  much  more 
readily  than  that  of  the  ordinary  polemic; 
and  the  tone  of  absolute  sincerity  throughout 
his  work  is  not  to  be  mistaken. 

From  the  "New  York  Times"— Saturday  Review. 

....  It  brings  a  new  view  and  suggests  a 
new  thought.  .  .  .  Both  manner  and  method 
are  earnest  and  logical. 


From  the  "Jewish  Ledger,"  New  Orleans. 

....  Asa  distinct  literary  treat,  aside  from 
its  lair  presentation  of  a  legend  that  is  mag- 


nificently  interpreted  by  the  Bavarian  peas- 


picuous  place  m  the  library  of  every  home, 


W.  T.  Stead,  Editor  of  the  London  "  Review  of 
Reviews,''  writes : 

Permit  me  to  express  my  thanks  to  you  for 
the  tribute  which  you  pay  to  the  Jew,  who, 
more  than  all  the  rest  of  your  nation  put  to- 
gether, succeeded  in  inspiring  the  heart  of 
man  with  the  aspirations  after  a  reign  of 
iiiral  justice  and  love,  to  which  the  great 
prophets  of  your  race  first  gave  clear  and 
articulate  expression. 

From  an  Address  Delivered  b>  the  Rev.  Benjamin 
Fay  Kills,  Oakland.  Ca!. : 

....  lie  seems  to  me  kinder  to  the  memory 
oi  je.siis  than  the  writers  of  the  Gospels. 

From  the  '•  Hebrew  Standard,"  New  York. 

!>r.  Krauslcopf  not  only  gives  a  faithful, 
accurate  and  impartial  description  of  the 
historical  drama,  its  scene  and  characters, 
but  also  his  ov,-n  care  fully  formed  conclusions 
cm  the  much-mooted  question  of  the  Cruci- 
fixion   Rabbi  Krauskopf's  latest  con- 
tribution to  American  Jewish  literature  may 
be  recommended  most  highly  to  even"  lay 
reader  who  \vi-hes  to  know  and  understand 
Ihe  verdict  of  historv. 


From  ''The  World,"  New  York. 

We  believe  that  few  readers  of  his  book, 
Jewish  or  Gentile,  will  fail  to  feel  that  he  has 
succeeded  in  throwing  light  on  the  subject, 
and  quieting  rather  than  hardening  asperities 
due  to  variance  of  beliefs. 

Superintendent  of  Schools  of  Yolo  County,  Cal., 
Mr.  T.  Goin,  writes : 

It  is  a  book  that  does  its  author  great  credit. 
It  portrays  a  great  mind  and  profound  schol- 
arship, and  will  doubtless  be  read  by  all 
scholars  with  great  interest.  This  book  is 
well  calculated  to  dispel  prejudice  and  super- 
stitions of  long  standing. 

A  Letter  from  Dr.  Isaac  Funk,  of  Funk  &  Wag- 
nails  Co. : 

In  your  book  I  henr  the  heart-cry  wrung 
from  a  great  people  that  has  suffered  untold 
wrongs,  awful  cruelty,  and  injustice  done  in 
the  name  of  Him  whose  life  and  words  are  to 
me  the  sweetest  memory  of  all  the  past — 
malice,  cruelty,  avarice,  superstition,  fanati- 
cism— all  masquerading  under  the  name  of 
Jesus,  for  all  these  centuries — struck  these 
cruel  blows. 

From  the  Hon.  Simon  Wolf: 

Its  merits  as  a  literary  production  reflect 
credit  on  your  scholarship,  your  broad-gauged 
review  of  the  salient  points,  and  elevates  the 
Jew  and  his  faith  into  those  regions  that 
compel  recognition. 


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